Hi, my name is Arti Zeighami,
I'm the Chief Data and Analytics Officer at H&M Group.
We've been operating since 1947.
Today, we are in 5,000 stores, over 74 countries,
and we have 180,000-plus employees in the company.
And I'm here to share with you the story of how H&M,
one of the largest fashion retailers in the world,
went from laggard to being an industry leader in AI
within three years.
The first thing we did was look at a portfolio
and see what capabilities do we want to enhance
with advanced analytics and AI?
AI for us has never been artificial intelligence-
it has been amplified intelligence.
We're amplifying our teams, our competencies.
We've done this for 70-plus years.
We know this business,
but now it becomes more complex and more data-driven,
where AI can come in and help
and enhance the teams to do even better.
So the five conditions for a successful journey is culture,
it's compass over map, it's deploy or die,
it's condition on measurements,
and finally, it's about amplified intelligence.
One of the most important parts is courage,
is the culture of courage- to dare to do new things,
to dare to fail, to dare to try something outside the box,
do things that you haven't done before-
and that's part of our DNA as a company.
We have always been very entrepreneurial.
We always tried new things.
So that's an important part to tap into that again,
and ensure that people dare to do those changes.
Secondly, when you do do things,
you also need to try not to plan too long.
It's good to have an understanding where you're heading,
but you need to be able to trust the needle of your compass.
So compass over map is more important than the map itself.
You look at the compass,
you look at the direction, and you start to walk.
And so if something fails, it's okay
because then you pivot.
That's an important part of that.
Thirdly, is something I refer to as deploy or die.
That is about testing things in reality.
It's about creating the MVPs. An MVP is not the full scale
of how something should look like,
but there's nothing behind it.
MVP is like a very thin slice of everything.
So you test things and gradually become better and better.
And the fourth thing is about the conditions
and how you measure things.
Because formerly a lot of companies,
even ourselves, were measuring a lot on the silos.
Now, cross is the new silo.
You need to measure the customer impact differently.
You need to start measuring the outcome
of an algo in a different way than you
would you have done before.
And you have to ask new questions on a Monday morning,
as a merchandiser, as a buyer, or whatever role you have
in the organization.
That part's important.
And also how you measure a follow-up
of the impact of what you're doing.
So that's an important thing.
And the fifth one is always going back
to the notion of amplified intelligence.
We're not replacing people, we're not putting in
these "terminator" programs,
but what we do is actually amplify
existing processes within our organization.
(soft music)