The previous a number of years have thrown quite a few challenges at client packaged items (CPG) corporations. The pandemic has led to shifting client channel preferences, a provide chain crunch, and price strain, to call just some. CPG titan Unilever has been answering the problem with analytics and synthetic intelligence (AI).

The 93-year-old, London-based CPG firm is the world’s largest cleaning soap producer. Its merchandise embody meals and condiments, toothpaste, magnificence merchandise and far more, together with manufacturers like Dove, Hellmann’s, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

Alessandro Ventura, CIO and vp of analytics and enterprise companies for North America at Unilever, has been on the forefront of serving to the corporate apply AI to its companies for years. Whereas initially within the function of IT director, he has since added analytics and folks companies to his portfolio.

“That’s the whole lot from facility administration, fleet administration, worker and amenities companies, and folks information, and that form of stuff,” Ventura explains.

Unilever believes AI will not be a expertise of tomorrow. It’s already being broadly used, and Ventura feels all industries might want to adapt to it.

In current months, Unilever has developed a variety of new expertise functions to assist its strains of enterprise within the markets of tomorrow. One of the vital essential is “Alex,” quick for Alexander the Nice. Alex, powered by ChatGPT, filters emails in Unilever’s Shopper Engagement Heart, sorting spam from actual client messages. For the respectable messages, it then recommends responses to Unilever’s human brokers.