The Home Depot taps Google Cloud AI capabilities to enhance customer experience and optimise operations

Google Cloud and The Home Depot have announced an extension of their multi-year relationship that aims to help the home improvement retailer accelerate its technology strategy and let customers complete their home improvement projects more efficiently and affordably.

The pair have collaborated since 2015, looking to improve The Home Depot's associate and customer experience no matter where shoppers are, whether that's in-store, online, or most often, a blend of those interactions.

"As one of the first major retailers to migrate our website to the cloud, Google has been a critical partner as we have built an interconnected shopping experience for our customers," says Fahim Siddiqui, EVP and CIO at The Home Depot.

"Our technology team looks forward to continuing to work closely with Google to remove friction for our customers when they shop with us and to stay on the cutting edge of retail technology."

The extended partnership involves The Home Depot accessing Google Cloud's AI capabilities to enhance the customer experience and optimise operations.

This includes leveraging technologies like machine learning, computer vision, and generative AI to enhance the retailer's inventory management operations and improve its overall supply chain efficiency.

In addition, the business will tap into future e-commerce enhancements to enable greater digital scalability.

By harnessing Google Cloud's AI platform, Vertex AI, advanced model training capabilities, and advanced data analytics, The Home Depot aims to gain deeper insights into customer preferences and needs.

"The Home Depot consistently puts customers at the centre of its technology transformation, and it is also redefining what it means to equip employees with powerful tools that get the job done," says Matt Renner, President at Google Cloud.

"Google Cloud is proud to support The Home Depot's strategic technology initiatives, with projects on the horizon that will help it continue to lead the industry in AI powered cloud innovation."

Over the last several years, The Home Depot has worked with Google Cloud to introduce several new capabilities to make its customers' interconnected experiences smoother, faster and more efficient and improve its operations.

• The launch of the Sidekick mobile app, which uses cloud-based machine learning and computer vision to help associates keep in-demand products stocked, improving on-shelf availability and customer experience.

• The roll-out of an enhanced online search experience, Intent Search, which enables customers to find products faster with more relevant search results. The deployment of Intent Search has driven significant improvements in click-through rates, conversion and revenue per search.

• The success of the mobile app, which customers use not only to shop on their mobile devices, but also as a tool for wayfinding, account identification, loyalty, order pickup and more.

• Leveraged Google Cloud's BigQuery data warehouse technology to make better decisions like analysing data to make targeted improvements to The Home Depot website and making supply chain improvements based on analysis of years of data.

• Successfully handled an unprecedented surge in online customer demand in 2020 when online sales doubled, leveraging Google Cloud's flexible and scalable technology infrastructure.