This episode of the Earley AI Podcast features Betsy Mello, a seasoned retail executive whose career includes leadership roles at Dorel Home, Levi’s, Old Navy, Sears, and several retail startups. With deep expertise in merchandising, inventory management, and eCommerce strategy, Betsy brings a pragmatic perspective shaped by years of leading digital transformation and managing major marketplace relationships with Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond, and others.

Host Seth Earley talks with Betsy about how retail leaders can navigate the ongoing shift from traditional operations to AI-driven business models. Their discussion explores how structured data, process discipline, and organizational alignment form the foundation of successful digital and AI initiatives—and why the fundamentals still matter, even in the age of automation.

Key Takeaways:

• How the move from brick-and-mortar to digital commerce has transformed consumer expectations and the pace of retail innovation.
• Why marketplaces are data supply chains—and how brands must adapt content, taxonomy, and product positioning across diverse channels.
• The importance of clean data, standardized terminology, and clear use cases before adopting AI solutions.
• Strategies for breaking down silos, aligning KPIs, and ensuring cross-functional collaboration around data and insights.
• Leading through change: the value of transparency, experimentation, and learning from failure during AI-driven transformation.
• What leaders often overlook when preparing for AI—and how to make foundational data work visible and measurable.
• The building blocks for sustainable AI success: information architecture, governance, and accountable data ownership.

Show Quotes:

"You need to have everything standard. You need to have clean data and very clear workflows and accountabilities... The key is having the team set in place and very clear defined processes and roles and responsibilities. It’s incredibly critical to make sure your foundation is correct. You need to be always starting at the basics." – Betsy Mello

"Supply chain is an information supply chain. And every time you have a new way of distributing your product, you have to think about, how do I distribute the data with that product?" - Seth Earley

Tune in to hear how retail and eCommerce leaders can turn complexity into clarity—and build the cultural and data foundations that make AI work.

Links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/betsymello/

Website: https://www.dorelhome.com

Thanks to our sponsors:

• VKTR
• Earley Information Science
• AI Powered Enterprise Book

Bharat Guruprakash, Chief Product Officer at Algolia, joins host Seth Earley on this episode of the Earley AI Podcast. With years of experience helping organizations leverage AI to connect people with information, Bharat brings deep insight into the evolving world of AI-powered search, retrieval, and agentic technologies. At Algolia, a global leader in AI-driven search and retrieval, he helps shape what’s next in unifying data, building intelligent systems, and designing platforms that understand real-time context.

Key Takeaways:

• Misconceptions about Search and AI: Many organizations think large language models (LLMs) can handle all search needs, but true effective AI solutions require robust retrieval systems beneath the surface.
• The Role of RAG and Memory: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) remains important, but the future is moving toward agentic architectures that require "memory" and stateful interactions, not just stateless search.
• Clean, Structured Data is Crucial: The importance of having clean, accessible, and normalized data stores as the backbone for any successful AI and search initiative.
• Experimentation and Innovation: Enterprises struggle with a culture of experimentation and face challenges in safely running and scaling AI experiments. Autonomous experimentation, where AI can test and optimize different approaches, is emerging as a solution.
• The Rise of Agentic Technologies: The distinction between generative AI (focused on content creation) and agentic AI (focused on task automation and execution), and how agents will soon drive more dynamic, event-driven workflows.
• Guardrails and Risk: Implementing proper protocols (like MCP and Google’s A2A SDKs) and guardrails is essential to ensure agents act safely and within business parameters.
• Privacy and the Future: As agents learn more about users than users know about themselves, privacy, transparency, and identity become critical concerns. The speed of change is challenging, but small, iterative steps help organizations evolve responsibly.

Insightful Quote from the Show:

"It's very risky to say, let's just boldly go forth into the unknown, right? I think you have to have experiments, right? You have to control them, experiments, but you have to Be careful about that and have a mechanism for managing that and for controlling it and for monitoring the results." Seth Earley

"It's okay to start small. Find the small places where you can improve...and keep multiplying them. Over time, when you look back after a year or two, you'll have a very different company from when you started." – Bharat Guruprakash

Tune in for a thoughtful deep dive into the challenges, opportunities, and responsible strategies for embracing AI, search, and agentic technologies in your organization.

Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bharatguruprakash/

Website: https://www.algolia.com

Thanks to our sponsors:

• VKTR
• Earley Information Science
• AI Powered Enterprise Book

In this episode of the Earley AI Podcast, host Seth Earley welcomes Eric Rehl, Vice President of Digital Customer Experience in North America at Schneider Electric. With over 25 years of expertise in digital strategy and customer experience, Eric has guided global organizations through complex digital transformations, always keeping business outcomes and customer needs at the core. Drawing on his deep industry knowledge, Eric shares how large enterprises can move beyond buzzwords like “digital transformation” and “AI,” instead choosing a pragmatic, data-driven approach to drive real business value.

Join Seth and Eric as they discuss the evolving role of digital capabilities in business strategy, the foundational importance of high-quality data, the unique challenges faced by B2B organizations, and how AI can power truly personalized customer experiences—from the ground up.

Key Takeaways:
Digital transformation should be rooted in business outcomes, not technology hype; focus on the “so what” for your customer and organization.

Strong, clean, accessible data is critical for scaling digital experiences and enabling AI-driven personalization—without it, even the best tools will fail.
B2B companies often lag in digital maturity due to legacy data architectures and complex customer relationships, but can catch up by investing strategically in foundational capabilities.

A robust digital journey relies on operationalizing and continually improving product and customer data, rather than one-off fixes.
Maturity in B2B digital experiences evolves from simply “doing no harm,” to enabling ease of business, and ultimately leveraging digital platforms for growth and commercial impact.

AI’s promise lies in moving from segmented personalization to real-time, dynamic customer engagement powered by integrated data and knowledge.

Preparing for AI-driven customer discovery means syndicating high-quality, semantically-structured content across channels—both on and off your own domain.

The next frontier is operationalizing knowledge (not just product or customer data) to fuel AI tools for differentiation and problem-solving.
Continuous experimentation and responsible opportunism allow organizations to discover new outcomes and business value.

Insightful Quotes:
"I think as you start building maturity, you're learning how to orchestrate those pieces. You're getting more of that harmonization of organizing principles across those disparate departments, across knowledge and content and customer experience and product information. And so that becomes kind of the holistic journey that you're thinking about." - Seth Earley

“We always start with the outcome. Like, why are we talking about capabilities here? Why are we talking about AI? What are we actually going to do with it to get to what the business outcome we’re trying to drive or the experience outcome we’re trying to drive?” - Eric Rehl
Don’t miss this in-depth conversation packed with practical advice and forward-looking insights for anyone leading or navigating digital transformation initiatives in the AI era.

Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericrehl/
Website: https://www.se.com/us/en/

Thanks to our sponsors:

• VKTR
• Earley Information Science
• AI Powered Enterprise Book