A.S. Watson Partners with Retail Intelligence Platform Rubikloud to Leverage Machine Learning Capabilities

One of the world’s oldest retailers A.S. Watson Group will be pumping $70 million in Big Data technologies to optimize marketing campaigns and drive powerful sales promotion activities. Established in 1841, the Hong Kong-based retail group revealed its intention to expand Big Data capabilities, investing significantly in a Canadian AI venture firm. It has partnered Toronto-based retail intelligence platform – Rubikloud to achieve scalable Big Data objectives.

The A.S. Watson Group or ASW will consolidate its retail brands across geographies by leveraging customer data using Big Data technologies and AI. The new investments will be directed at developing performance-based marketing platforms and predictive analytics capabilities for independent sales teams. Partnership with Rubikloud will enable retailers at ASW to enhance customer experience and operational efficiency using data visualization and machine learning capabilities.

ASW introduced the Rubikloud app across European stores on a trial basis starting in 2015. It witnessed a significant rise in sales from personalized promotion activities, forcing ASW to partner Rubikloud for all future retail marketing integrations.

“We are investing in big data amid global economic uncertainties because we believe that technology is a critical enabler for successful retailing in today’s world,” said Malina Ngai, chief operating officer of A.S. Watson Group, in a statement. Ngai added that Rubikloud’s technology will enable the company to “focus our resources, from back-end support to the shop floor, on building a better customer experience.”

According to Kerry Liu, CEO of Rubikloud, the company aims to support ASW to further enhance its capabilities in personalizing customer offers through advanced targeting, as well as optimizing promotional effectiveness.

“We are thrilled to partner with a global retail leader like A.S. Watson Group. At Rubikloud we focus on applying machine learning and flexible big data architectures in practical applications, which means driving tangible business impact.”

Deploying marketing intelligence tools in retail is a growing trend. Rubikloud offers a robust retail intelligence platform, enabling the intersection of an enterprise SaaS for retail marketing, embedded machine learning, and elastic cloud compliant architectures to drive automation.  According to CEO Kerry Liu, Rubikloud has a “head start” in the race to lead retail cloud computing innovations.