Microsoft has introduced a suite of innovative generative AI and data solutions for retailers, set to be showcased at NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show. The offerings aim to enhance the entire retail shopper journey, enabling personalized shopping experiences, empowering store associates, and unifying retail data for more effective audience targeting.

“Microsoft Fabric gives retailers:” a set of comprehensive features including a retail industry data model, real-time e-commerce data connector, and analytics templates. This enables retailers to plan, architect, and design data solutions, bringing together data and analytics tools for enhanced customer engagement and business operations.

To cater to the growing demand for personalized experiences, Microsoft Cloud for Retail now provides a copilot template for personalized shopping. Using Azure OpenAI Service, this template allows retailers to build personalized shopping experiences, enabling customers to use natural language to find and purchase products with the assistance of a virtual shopping assistant.

Shelley Bransten, Corporate Vice President of Global Retail, Consumer Goods & Gaming Industries, stated, “Generative AI can serve as a key differentiator for retailers, providing their customers with a unique and memorable experience that embodies their brand identity.”

The offering extends to store associates through a copilot template on Azure OpenAI Service, facilitating solutions to support store operations. This provides store associates and managers with quick access to information on store procedures, product catalogs, HR policies, and benefits using natural language queries.

Microsoft also addresses the challenge of siloed data with the preview of new retail data solutions in Microsoft Fabric. This unified analytics platform includes a retail industry data model, a real-time data connector for Sitecore OrderCloud, and analytics templates to help retailers derive actionable insights.

In the marketing realm, Microsoft introduces new Copilot features in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, allowing marketers to kickstart projects and campaigns through an AI-first experience. The features provide a centralized project board and AI-recommended content.

The company also ventures into retail media with the Retail Media Creative Studio, a generative AI-powered banner ad creative solution available in preview from January 2024. This solution enables retailers to auto-generate and edit banner creatives using generative AI, optimizing campaign performance and delivering a more personalized shopping experience.

Microsoft’s latest advancements aim to help retailers navigate challenges, streamline operations, and provide customers with seamless and memorable shopping experiences.