# 166 - Machine Learning and AI Innovations at WooliesX Ram Radhakrishnan, General Manager for Customer Analytics, AI & Data Science

Organisations are in constant need of innovation to fulfill their end consumer’s needs. That’s why several companies have started innovation areas to help update and grow their main business. Today we are focusing on starting a Machine Learning and AI initiative within these innovation areas to grow the value they are providing, scale their results and positively impact the rest of the organisation. We are joined by Ram Radhakrishnan, General Manager for Customer Analytics, AI & Data Science at WooliesX, where he is building world-class capabilities thanks to 250+ data practitioners coming together. Ram is certain that AI and ML are future capabilities able to take organisations to new heights, whether it be solving business problems or providing a unique customer experience. The AI & ML space is quite big and diverse, but both Ram and Felipe share how they’ve seen a huge rise in the demand for machine learning engineers due to the growing need of scaling and operationalizing models. When it comes to hiring, the most important skill he looks for in candidates is the right attitude and the desire to always keep learning. WooliesX has a focus on teams and their members and works for them to dedicate nearly 20% of their time towards developing their own skills and knowledge. Tune in for the full conversation where Ram goes into detail about WooliesX agile practices, their scope of work, growing their teams and what he believes are the most important upcoming skills in the data space. Enjoy the show! Check out our upcoming live events at datafuturology.com/events Read the full episode summary here.