Sbuħija mmexxija mid-data: Kif The Estée Lauder Companies tiftaħ għarfien b’ChatGPT

The Estée Lauder Companies⁠(jinfetaħ f’tieqa ġdida) (ELC) hija mexxej globali fis-sbuħija prestige, b’portafoll ta’ aktar minn 20 marka ikonika inklużi Clinique, La Mer, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, u Aveda. Il-kumpanija u l-marki tagħha huma magħrufa għal prodotti tas-sbuħija ewlenin flimkien ma’ esperjenzi personalizzati u ta’ kuntatt għoli għall-konsumaturi globali tagħha.

Hekk kif id-dinja tas-sbuħija timxi lejn iper-personalizzazzjoni, hekk ukoll għamel l-approċċ tal-kumpanija għar-riċerka u t-teknoloġija. L-adozzjoni mifruxa ta’ ChatGPT Enterprise minn ELC qed tgħin lill-kumpanija tagħti s-setgħa lill-kreattività tal-impjegati u tiftaħ għarfien biex taqdi aħjar lill-konsumaturi tal-lum.

L-industrija globali tas-sbuħija timxi malajr, u l-pipeline tal-prodotti ta’ ELC hija influwenzata minn ammonti enormi ta’ data tal-konsumaturi minn stħarriġ, provi kliniċi, u użu tal-prodott.

The ELC team adopted ChatGPT for data processing and analysis at scale. Today, ChatGPT is an integral part of ELC’s workflows, with more than 240 custom GPTs that give their employees greater time and insights to do what they do best: develop new and market existing products with precision, aligned to emerging skincare and beauty trends.

Central to ELC’s rapid adoption of AI was the company’s core belief that creativity lies in every chair. “When OpenAI came out with ChatGPT, we asked employees to tell us how they would use it,” says Raheel Khan, SVP of Foresight and Growth Intelligence at ELC. “Over one thousand people submitted ideas.”

This interest led ELC to establish their GPT Lab: A cross-functional group empowered to experiment and develop business solutions—“custom GPTs”—with ChatGPT. 

“Our job is to uncover high-impact use cases that drive value to our different brands and regions,” said Charmaine Pek, ELC’s Director of ChatGPT Enterprise Adoption. “The GPT Lab aims to identify patterns across meaningful use cases and amplify these successes to scale to more brands and regions.”

Matul 10 ġimgħat biss, il-membri tal-Lab żviluppaw diversi GPTs personalizzati, kull wieħed bl-iskop u l-firxa tiegħu.

Waħda mill-applikazzjonijiet l-aktar notevoli maħluqa mill-GPT Lab hija l-Fragrance Insights GPT. Żviluppata biex tgħin lit-tim tal-Fragrance Foresight jiġbed għarfien minn stħarriġ tal-konsumaturi, il-GPT tanalizza datasets kbar ta’ stħarriġ tal-konsumaturi biex tikxef xejriet u preferenzi, u tippermetti lil ELC tiddisinja prodotti li jolqtu demografiji differenti.

“Qabel, konna nqattgħu sigħat innaddfu u norganizzaw id-data manwalment biex niksbu għarfien,” jgħid Yuan Zhan, Director tat-tim Fragrance Foresight ta’ ELC. “Bil-Fragrance GPT, nistgħu nistaqsu mistoqsijiet kumplessi bl-Ingliż sempliċi, u tgħarbel id-data minnufih.”

Il-membri tal-Lab nedew ukoll il-Clinical Trial Data GPT, li malajr jiġbed għarfien dwar l-effettività tal-prodotti tal-kura tal-ġilda—pereżempju, biex jiddetermina l-perċentwal ta’ titjib fil-moisturization immedjata ta’ prodott bħas-serum Advanced Night Repair ta’ Estée Lauder—minn eluf ta’ rapporti ta’ provi kliniċi b’mistoqsija sempliċi.                 

GPTs oħra jinkludu Copywriting GPT li huwa assistent ta’ copywriting personalizzat għal diversi marki, iddisinjat biex joħloq kontenut dettaljat, sinifikanti u allinjat mal-marka fuq diversi pjattaformi, u Vendor Snapshot Creator GPT li jissintetizza għarfien essenzjali dwar kull fornitur, inkluż il-profil tiegħu, l-istorja tax-xiri ta’ ELC, u dettalji rilevanti oħra.

The Estée Lauder Companies structures its GPT creation process like a sprint, focusing on quick prototyping and testing to identify success predictors and build for scale.

“We look at the value the GPT would bring to the organization, and we also look at the effort that is needed,” explains Kingsuk Chakrabarty, Director of Enterprise Architecture, AI and R&D at ELC. “Then we prioritize the GPTs which have high value and can be built quickly.”

Within the GPT Lab, “teams” of people—a business user, a subject matter expert (SME), and a technical lead—are responsible for ensuring each idea is based on impact and feasibility:

1. Design: the business user defines the purpose, scope, and audience for the GPT in a two-page Use Case Brief to gain clarity before building.
2. Prepare: the SME shapes the use case by gathering and preparing relevant data, ensuring best practices for GPT development.
3. Build & Test: the tech lead builds the GPT with sets of data and rigorously tests to assess accuracy and consistency.
4. Launch: the full team deploys the GPT and a user guide for teams to use.
5. Pivot & Scale: the full team uses feedback loops to iterate and optimize the outputs based on GPT performance.

“Designing the right use cases means asking the right questions,” shares Pek. “Why do we want to build this GPT? What is the problem that we're trying to solve? What impact will it have?”

By working in iterative cycles and sharing insights, the GPT Lab was able to develop AI-powered prototypes in a number of weeks.

Not only has ChatGPT helped employees work faster, it’s expanded their creative capacity by reducing manual tasks:

• Time savings: Across R&D and marketing teams, ChatGPT has improved response time by more than 90%. What once took teams several hours to research—like finding claims about product efficacy—now takes minutes. 
• Speed to market: By accelerating data analysis, ELC can launch products faster, ensuring they remain responsive to fast-changing consumer trends. 
• Internal adoption: There’s been enthusiastic adoption of GPT across the organization, with more teams asking to integrate AI into their workflows for creative solutions.

“Using ChatGPT Enterprise has done two things,” says Khan. “One, it allows our incredible human talent to spend more time on tasks that require creativity. And two, it actually increases capability to deliver on what matters most to our consumers.” 

ELC plans to apply top GPTs across its portfolio of brands, empowering more teams to take advantage of AI-driven insights and creativity. 

“AI enables us to deliver market-leading products on a larger scale, and better. With OpenAI, we’re reducing low-value work for our employees and giving our teams the opportunity to create on a whole new scale,” says Lauder.