Agentic AI in Day-to-Day Operations
Even before achieving fully agentic workflows, retailers are finding meaningful gains in everyday tasks. “We’re using AI a lot in day-to-day operations,” Stevens said, pointing to email drafting, presentations and content creation using Google AI tools. “I’m surprised how much the business has embraced it.”
Rather than a threat to jobs, Stevens sees AI as a tool for handling complexity. “There’s been a lot of talk about AI taking people’s jobs, but it’s not that,” he explained. “It’s the complex tasks that AI can help us do. AI can help us accomplish complex tasks really quickly.”
For most retailers, the immediate goal is clear: Free up employee time and reduce operational friction. As Stevens put it, his company is prioritizing use cases that can “save time and money” while improving speed and accuracy.
Andy Szanger, director of strategic industries at CDW, noted that retailers are increasingly past the experimentation phase. “AI in retail has really moved beyond the pilots,” he said. “The question for many retailers is, how do they scale it?”
