El Cortes Inglés tests out Alibaba Cloud digital tech

El Cortes Inglés is piloting Alibaba Cloud’s artificial intelligence and cloud driven technology.

The European department store group is tapping the Image Search and Recommendation Engine as part of its efforts to personalise the customer experience online. “Alibaba Cloud offers some of the most advanced cloud-based technologies and solutions for retail, and we’re very excited to be working with the global leader on the next stage of our digital transformation,” says Víctor del Pozo, CEO at El Corte Inglés.

“The deployment of Image Search and Recommendation Engine could present our customers with a top-level online retail experience, which will continue to give us a competitive edge to maintain our lead in retail across Europe.”

"We are thrilled to have achieved this further milestone in our long-standing partnership with El Corte Inglés, following the sign of an agreement last year that covers commerce, smart payments, cloud computing and New Retail,” adds Rodrigo Cipriani Foresio, General Manager Southern Europe at Alibaba Group and Country Manager Southern Europe at Alipay.

“Apart from the great results on the cloud side, El Corte Inglés has a number of stores already operating on AliExpress and we are also on a good trajectory on the Tmall Global side. Together, we are working towards the digitisation of retail, and we are sure that the synergies we are creating thanks to the skills and expertise of our respective teams, will generate incredible value for the end-consumers and for the industry overall.”

El Corte Inglés is also looking into leveraging Alibaba Group’s digital commerce, retail, finance, logistics, digital media and entertainment ecosystem as it eyes “greater opportunities globally”.