Gen AI in the workplace — an ASOS view
AI and Machine Learning are transforming how we work at ASOS: whether it’s supporting better demand forecasting, helping with data-driven decision-making, testing an AI Stylist tool with our customers, or powering our recommendation system — delivering billions of product recommendations to our customers per day.
Much of this work is driven by our amazing AI and Data Science team, who are experts in their field. But we’re always looking for ways to empower all our people to work smarter, faster, and more creatively at ASOS — and we can’t rely on our AI and Data Science team to do it all! That’s why over the last year we’ve put significant focus on rolling out generative AI (Gen AI) tools within the digital workplace and to all our teams across the business.
What does generative AI mean for the workplace?
We believe that Gen AI tools can transform the way we work at ASOS, enabling us to create better experiences for our customers, people, and partners. Yet many people struggle to understand its practical applications.
To address this, our first step was to establish a foundational knowledge of Gen AI and automation through an awareness campaign, applying it to practical examples that everyone could understand. We also brought Gen AI to life, by characterising it as an assistant called ‘Smarts’, really demonstrating AI is this super-smart assistant that’s read more than you could imagine and is there to support you get stuff done.
The 10-week campaign focused initially on building that basis of knowledge before delivering learning for specific tools and capabilities so our ASOSers could experiment with Gen AI in a safe way. Some of the key capabilities we focused on were:
- Freeing up time to focus on higher value work — through delegating ‘busy work’ to AI assistants.
- Increased innovation — by leveraging AI tooling to be more creative and support ideation.
- Time saving — through automated processes.
- Enhanced insight — by using AI assistants to present themes, sentiments, suggestions and recommendations.
- Deliver faster — by tackling the ‘blank page’ problem of document drafting.
Gen AI in action
Since starting our campaign we’ve already seen some great examples of how Gen AI is being used to improve efficiency and deliver results:
People Experience using Copilot for 365
Our People Experience (what we call HR) team used Microsoft Copilot for 365 to analyse over 4,000 individual comments provided as part of our annual employee engagement survey. It meant that as well as manually reading individual comments for their business area, senior stakeholders could read a summary of common themes and trends pulled together by Copilot, enabling effective prioritisation and action. As well as saving time, Copilot helped to surface trends that would be very difficult to identify manually given the large volume of qualitative feedback.
Trade using Copilot in Power BI
Copilot in Power BI is a Gen AI tool that can help ASOSers analyse and visualise large data sets quickly and easily. It can also generate summaries of the data insights and trends in natural language. One of our Trade teams is running proof of concepts using Microsoft Copilot in Power BI to unlock insights faster and across large data sets. It is also being piloted to support the summarisation of performance week on week.
Live translation in meetings
Live translation is an AI feature within Microsoft Teams that can transcribe and translate speech in real time, allowing participants to choose their preferred language and see the subtitles on their screen. As a result, we are seeing many ASOSers using live translation in meetings to help colleagues follow along in their native language. There are over 40 spoken languages at ASOS — so using live translation helps us make sure we’re having more inclusive and productive meetings.
Next steps
There’s lots more we can do to drive greater adoption and deliver greater benefits for ASOS. With a well-defined roadmap of Gen AI products coming to the digital workplace at ASOS over the next year, and a wider rollout of some of our existing tools planned, it’s clear that we’ve only just scratched the surface so far.
About Me
Hello, I’m Callum, Head of Technology - AI & Business Productivity at ASOS. My team and I work with colleagues across the business to address their business tooling needs and adopt new technology that helps them to deliver.
When I’m not looking at how ASOS can adopt the latest technology in the Digital Workplace, I can usually be found riding my bike, running, or trying to persuade my young son to support Notts County.
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