Microsoft’s AI Tour is making the rounds in its global tour. Toronto was a recent stop.

Alysa Taylor, CMO of Commercial Cloud & AI, and Chris Barry, former President of Microsoft Canada, presented the keynote and shared some powerful information.

Generative AI has the potential to add $187 billion to the Canadian economy by 2030 from labour productivity gains and creation of new products and services. In a time where we are talking about a significant lack of productivity in Canada, this is profound.

They shared some fascinating client outcomes as a result of using AI.

1. Cineplex saved over 30K hours annually in manual processing time.
2. Finastra dramatically reduced creative production time from 7 months to 7 weeks
3. Canadian Tire saves corporate employees 30 to 60 minutes a day using ChatCTC. This is a tool that was developed with Microsoft.

I was impressed by Canadian Tire’s use of AI to support corporate teams in tasks such as writing role requirements to creating product descriptions. They have also implemented AI to assist sales associates and customers with product discovery. The value proposition and time-saving benefits of these tools are clear, especially considering the volume of SKUs that Canadian Tire offers. I can only imagine all the insights and feedback they are gathering from their sales associates and customers.

Candidly, I looked at these results and thought about how AI could help the merchandising function of retail. Outside of predictive analytics and planning tools, the actual function of buying with the help of AI could be an incredible time saver for merchants.

Here is where I see opportunity.

Consider this: Buyers attending trade shows or showroom appointments often haul around sales history, open-to-buy (OTB) forecasts, and a slew of other essential documents. I did this for over two decades, and it never got any easier. We relied on printouts or lugged laptops through bustling showrooms and crowded trade show floors. Navigating events like Coterie or Magic with a tote already heavy with preparation materials—only to pile on lookbooks and brand collateral—felt less like a professional experience and more like an impromptu workout.

The better approach is to consolidate this information into a mobile application. All the relevant buying information will be available but there will also be real-time customer and market insights. This would include best selling categories with product details like color, fit, style and function.

The tool would go one step further and make recommendations regarding what styles to buy, quantities by size and flow of product. This would avoid the need to go back to the office and manually calculate what you need to buy. The suggested quantity to buy will be within the constraints of forecast and margin goals. The main benefit is that eliminating manual tasks saves hours of time and removes the guesswork with buying.

Not to mention the unwanted workout!

Spending time with Microsoft enabled me to observe how brands and retailers can save time, effort and resources with AI. There is a clear opportunity to go even further to help buyers and merchants do their work more efficiently. All in all, the time and effort that is saved can be invested in serving the customer.

And, isn’t that what we all want?

Future dates and stops of the Microsoft AI Tour can be found here.