This is the Trace Id: 015ec1a33dcac87bc23959b6114fed7b
1/16/2025

From seven days to three minutes: Majid Al Futtaim boosts customer centricity with Azure OpenAI Service

Majid Al Futtaim Retail faced fragmented data systems and slow manual reporting, causing delayed insights and inefficiencies. They needed a solution to streamline operations and improve data accessibility.

By implementing Azure Synapse, Power BI, and Azure OpenAI Service, Majid Al Futtaim Retail centralized data, automated reporting, and integrated advanced AI for better targeting and feedback analysis.

The company saved USD1 million annually, cut feedback processing time from seven days to three hours, and improved geographic targeting, boosting efficiency with AI-driven solutions.

Majid Al Futtaim Retail

Majid Al Futtaim (MAF Retail), a leading shopping malls, communities, retail, and leisure pioneer across the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia, holds exclusive rights to the Carrefour brand in 32 countries. It also operates over 450 stores in 14 nations, employing more than 37,000 people and serving over 770,000 customers daily. Majid Al Futtaim’s flagship stores are especially notable in the Emirates.

Bringing AI firepower

Committed to innovative solutions to elevate customers’ shopping experiences, boost productivity, and enhance efficiency, Majid Al Futtaim integrated advanced AI capabilities to further streamline reporting. “We chose Azure OpenAI due to its compatibility with our ecosystem and its technical reliability, which aligns with our partnership with Microsoft,” stated Arun Chandra Mohan, Chief Digital Officer at Majid Al Futtaim Retail. “We also trust the data privacy and security protocols of Microsoft Azure OpenAI.”

Leveraging Azure OpenAI Service as the engine and Power BI with Power Apps as user-friendly interfaces, Majid Al Futtaim is developing a suite of machine learning models, including tools for in-store operational analytics, to power a range of solutions designed to support employees and optimize operations.

We chose Azure OpenAI due to its compatibility with our ecosystem and its technical reliability, which aligns with our partnership with Microsoft.

Arun Chandra Mohan, Chief Digital Officer, Majid Al Futtaim Retail

AI-driven competitive pricing

Majid Al Futtaim offers a range of 7 million SKUs across its 14 markets, requiring significant commercial and technological effort to manage pricing effectively. The new AI engine, "Spider," ensures competitive pricing by considering various scenarios, recommendations, and periodic promotions, ensuring customers receive the best value and price. Additionally, the engine enhances SKU specifications and information, enabling customers to make better choices and easily navigate their specific needs—whether it’s gluten-free, allergy-friendly, organic, or sustainably packaged.

Majid Al Futtaim is also deploying ‘Geo,’ another solution built with Azure OpenAI Service which enables Carrefour to enhance and advance personalized offers, providing an improved shopping experience that matches customer needs, saves them time and effort, and rewards loyalty. The AI engine provides a wide range of geo-spatial insights and analyzes the demographics in each neighborhood where Carrefour operates.

Interpreting customer feedback

Majid Al Futtaim’s third Azure OpenAI Service solution, “Excellence,” focuses on advanced text analytics and mining. Previously, the marketing team manually processed between 60,000 to 70,000 customer responses weekly, categorizing them and recommending actions for each customer. Mohan shares, “Processing customer intelligence took around seven days and provided only basic analytics. Now, using Azure OpenAI, it takes just three to four minutes, enabling us to process and action much faster, backed by deeper insights.” The team can now capture customer emotions and categorize feedback by aspects like delivery, quality, hygiene, or checkout queue times, generating actionable insights for improvement.

With over 465 stores and up to 120 legal documents per location, Majid Al Futtaim manages a large volume of contracts using “Excellence.” The team can extract relevant information and map it to financial data for analysis and action. Previously, the legal team spent up to seven working days on each contract inquiry compared to now where they simply search and extract relevant information automatically within minutes.

Processing customer intelligence took around seven days and provided only basic analytics. Now, using Azure OpenAI, it takes just three to four minutes, enabling us to process and action much faster, backed by deeper insights.

Arun Chandra Mohan, Chief Digital Officer, Majid Al Futtaim Retail

Proactivemanagement with less effort

To ensure the successful adoption of digital transformations, Majid Al Futtaim launched the Enterprise Data Management initiative. This involved running awareness sessions, gathering use cases, and advocating the benefits. “Our team has been incredibly collaborative,” said Mohan. “They have a strong understanding of how technology can elevate their work, enhance productivity, and achieve even better results.”

The successful partnership with Azure OpenAI Service has enabled Majid Al Futtaim to achieve its ultimate goal of cost and efficiency optimization while gaining market independence and understanding. A significant boost in productivity and an improved customer experience was also achieved through combining ‘Spider’ with ‘Geo’ to get the best price for each item and where best to sell based on geo-spatial insights. This combination further reflects Carrefour’s customer-centric approach.

Today, teams across Carrefour spend less time on routine tasks, empowering them to further develop, grow, and progress their scopes and careers. “We now have the opportunity to concentrate more on proactively delivering exceptional products with the highest quality at the right price, time, and place—producing exceptional customer experiences across touchpoints,” Mohan noted.

Looking ahead, Majid Al Futtaim is considering implementing master data management in Microsoft Purview. “This could lead to significant savings in capital expenditures and streamline several days of work down to just a few minutes,” noted Mohan.

Majid Al Futtaim remains committed to continuous improvement and innovation. “As an organization, we are not just data-driven but also value-driven. Our conversations always begin with ‘What value do we want to create, and what is our desired outcome?’ To that end, we continuously seek feedback to improve our products, making them more practical, effective, and efficient,” concluded Mohan.

Find out more about Majid Al Futtaim on FacebookInstagramLinkedInX/Twitter, and YouTube.

We now have the opportunity to concentrate more on proactively delivering exceptional products with the highest quality at the right price, time and place- producing exceptional customer experience across touchpoints.

Arun Chandra Mohan, Chief Digital Officer, Majid Al Futtaim Retail

Take the next step

Fuel innovation with Microsoft

Talk to an expert about custom solutions

Let us help you create customized solutions and achieve your unique business goals.

Drive results with proven solutions

Achieve more with the products and solutions that helped our customers reach their goals.

Follow Microsoft