How Retailers can Get Started with Personalization - Debjani Deb of ZineOne
Release Date: 03/16/2021
How Commerce Leaders Avoid Renewal Traps and Vendor Drag - with David Cost of Rainbow Apparel
The AI in Business Podcast
Enterprise software costs are rising while vendor performance often isn’t, and AI has fundamentally changed what enterprises can credibly threaten to build in-house. In this episode, David Cost, Chief Digital Officer at Rainbow Apparel, explores how enterprise leaders can restructure vendor contracts to maintain exit leverage, eliminate auto-renewal traps, and use AI-enabled build alternatives as a legitimate negotiating tool. The conversation examines the cost-benefit calculus of build versus buy in the AI era, red flags in service-level agreements, and how to negotiate exits from...
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Moving from Delayed Data to Event-Level Visibility - with Alex Curran of Aptitude Software
The AI in Business Podcast
Finance teams are being asked to influence outcomes in real time while operating on architectures built for delayed, aggregated, and heavily reconciled data. In this episode, Alex Curran, CEO at Aptitude Software, examines how finance functions can move toward real‑time, event‑level visibility and discusses this shift with host Dan Faggella. She highlights the practical changes required for CFOs — from capturing every financial event at the transaction level to enabling continuous reconciliation and full lineage — so finance can surface exceptions immediately and support decisions as...
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Scaling Agentic AI in CX Without Losing the Customer - with Shri Nandan of Comcast
The AI in Business Podcast
As enterprises move agentic AI from controlled pilots into production customer-facing workflows, the gaps in data continuity, governance, and human-agent coordination become the deciding factors in whether AI scales or stalls. In this episode, Shri Nandan, VP of AI Experiences at Comcast, examines why customer experience has become the real stress-test for enterprise AI — and what it takes to scale with customer trust intact. The conversation covers the three data foundations required for context continuity in production, practical principles for human-AI orchestration, and why cross-team...
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How Vertical AI Achieves Defensible Accuracy - with Steve Hasker of Thomson Reuters
The AI in Business Podcast
The rising use of general‑purpose models in regulated environments is creating a widening gap between what AI can generate and what fiduciary professionals can safely rely on. In this episode, Steve Hasker, CEO at Thomson Reuters, examines how AI must be trained, validated, and governed to deliver the level of accuracy required in legal, tax, and audit workflows in conversation with host Dan Faggella, Emerj CEO and Head of Research. The discussion highlights the operational demands of vertical AI, the role of expert‑trained agents, and why human oversight remains essential in high‑stakes...
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Fixing the Decision Speed Gap in Modern Supply Chains - with Joris Wijpkema of Optilogic
The AI in Business Podcast
Supply chain organizations still struggle to respond to major disruptions because their core planning systems can’t evaluate structural options or network‑level changes at the speed required. In this episode, Joris Wijpkema, Executive Vice President for Solutions and Strategy at Optilogic, joins host Marilie Fouché and examines how a dedicated, high‑compute modeling layer enables teams to run thousands of scenarios in minutes and make faster, better‑aligned decisions. The discussion highlights how leaders can strengthen resilience by unifying data foundations, building trust in...
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How Enterprise Leaders Should Measure the ROI of AI - with Darko Todorovic of HTEC
The AI in Business Podcast
Enterprise AI investments frequently succeed at the pilot stage and collapse at scale, not because the technology fails, but because the organizational conditions for adoption were never established. In this episode, Darko Todorovic, CTO at HTEC Group, examines why most AI ROI gaps originate in poor problem definition and inadequate change management, and outlines how senior leaders can build the baselines, KPIs, and organizational readiness needed to measure and sustain real returns. The conversation covers practical guidance on assessing technological and organizational maturity, avoiding...
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Modernizing Targeting to Close the Field Execution Gap - with Damion Nero of Daiichi Sankyo
The AI in Business Podcast
Pharma commercial teams are generating more data than ever, but field intelligence is still arriving too late to change rep behavior before the engagement window closes. In this episode, Damion Nero, Global Head of Statistics at Daiichi Sankyo, joins Emerj editor Yolandi de Weerdt to examine why fragmented data pipelines, not a shortage of data, are the structural root of the gap between commercial insight and field execution. The conversation covers what separates teams that successfully adopt AI from those stuck in the pilot phase, and why starting with routine, high-certainty use cases...
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How Unified Context Turns AI Into Real Enterprise Performance - with Ravi Marwaha of Arango
The AI in Business Podcast
Enterprise AI agents fail consistently in production, not because of model limitations, but because they lack a live, temporally aware context layer grounded in the actual current state of the business. In this episode, Ravi Marwaha, Chief Operating Officer & Chief Technology Product Officer at Arango, explores how treating context as infrastructure—rather than a data pipeline problem—enables agents to reason accurately, explain their decisions, and deliver measurable outcomes across customer support, semiconductor engineering, and clinical trial site selection. The discussion covers...
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AI Models as a Commodity and Why Data Foundations Decide Who Wins - with Guillermo B. Vazquez of SAP
The AI in Business Podcast
Enterprise leaders face a growing gap between rapid AI advancement and the fragmented data and processes that limit their ability to operationalize it. In this episode, Guillermo Vazquez, Chief Architect in the Business Transformation Services for SAP America, examines with host Nick Gersch how harmonized data, standardized processes, and clear identification of differentiating workflows form the groundwork for effective AI‑enabled ERP. He highlights the practical sequence for building this foundation so future AI‑driven adaptation becomes seamless rather than disruptive. For AI brands...
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From Overwhelm to Working AI in Pharma and Life Sciences - with Art Shectman of Elephant Ventures
The AI in Business Podcast
Regulatory volatility, scientific‑grade context requirements, and entrenched legacy processes are creating a level of operational complexity in pharma that makes even high‑value AI initiatives difficult to move from concept to production. In this episode, Art Shectman, CEO at Elephant Ventures, examines with host Marilie Fouché how leaders can cut through that complexity by isolating a single, clearly defined workflow slice and rebuilding it for near‑term, dependable deployment rather than long‑range architectural perfection. The discussion highlights how removing outdated process...
info_outlineToday's guest is Debjani Deb, CEO of ZineOne, an AI-based personalization firm in the Bay Area, who has raised over $15M and has worked with well-known retail brands such as Men's Warehouse. Debjani speaks to us this week about two topics. One, how she sees the retail world reeling and responding, the changes that are happening, and the perspective, boots on the ground, in the retail world post-Covid-19. Second, what is the scale of maturity of personalization, where can companies start, and how should they think about first projects for building recommendations and personalization into their experience. She lays out several potential use cases that companies should apply and rules of thumb for shifting and sorting through them. Are you interested in more use cases for AI in Retail? Download our AI in Retail cheat-sheet PDF guide at: emerj.com/ret1