Everest climber takes Lenovo Retail Solutions to peak of global recognition

Lawrence Yu believes there is a parallel between his experience of climbing Mount Everest and his role heading the business team at Lenovo Retail Solutions. Both journeys began at the ground level and, as he describes it, both resulted in wholly rewarding outcomes.

“For me, personally, the work we are doing at Lenovo Retail Solutions is like climbing another mountain right from the bottom,” he says. “It’s going to be a years-long effort. It takes a lot of dedication, a lot of perseverance, but that drive is exactly what customers are looking for when they come to Lenovo.”

The retail industry is grappling with persistent issues such as evolving customer needs, labour shortages and operational inefficiency. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers a promising path to address these challenges.

However, the reality of AI adoption is that many businesses are unprepared, despite their best intentions. While 69 per cent of retailers plan to implement AI, 65 per cent face difficulties keeping up with new technologies and 41 per cent lack in-house AI expertise. Making full use of AI throughout a company can be a long, complex journey.

“AI needs to be implemented, and that’s the difficult part,” Yu says. “One of the biggest challenges is customers are not sure about the outcome. Recognising this, we work with customers to implement the AI solutions in a phased, step-by-step approach, starting with a proof-of-concept project in one area before expanding is one of the solutions.”

From identifying opportunities and use cases to managing data and deploying solutions, Lenovo aims to support organisations of all sizes on their AI implementation journeys. Lenovo’s AI Services bring together business advisers, top data scientists and well-established, AI-optimised infrastructure to make it easy. The company brings AI to the public, to enterprises, and personal data to help accelerate retailers’ AI journey and unleash intelligent transformation.