AWS re:Invent 2023 Recap: The Most Important Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods Announcements to Know About

The energy at re:Invent 2023 was on another level, especially for the Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) sectors. Packed with exciting service announcements, particularly around generative artificial intelligence (AI), leaders unveiled solutions and strategies that are poised to revolutionize the industry.

If you couldn’t join us in Las Vegas this year, we’ve compiled some of the best, can’t-miss content from re:Invent 2023.

Keynotes

From groundbreaking advancements to inspiring stories, this year’s re:Invent keynotes featured a treasure trove of insights from AWS leaders and featured customers.

CEO Keynote with Adam Selipsky

In the first keynote, attendees joined AWS CEO Adam Selipsky as he shared his perspective on cloud transformation.

“The cloud is for anyone. Our customers are solving big problems, serving critical needs, and dreaming up the world’s next big thing,” Selipsky says. “And they count on us to be secure, to be reliable, to innovate rapidly, to delight their customers, and to empower new ways to grow their businesses—all on AWS.”

Watch the keynote to hear Selipsky and featured customer speakers highlight innovations in data, infrastructure, AI, and machine learning (ML) that are helping customers achieve their goals faster. These innovations include the launch of Amazon S3 Express One Zone—a fast cloud object storage for performance-critical applications—retrieval augmented generation (RAG), agents for Amazon Bedrock, and more.

Monday Night Live Keynote with Peter DeSantis

Continuing his Monday Night Live tradition, Peter DeSantis, Senior Vice President of AWS Utility Computing, dove deep into the engineering that powers AWS services.

“Serverless promises to remove the muck of caring for servers. No need to upgrade software, patch operating systems, retire old hosts, qualify new hosts,” he says. “With serverless, all this goes away. But this is just the beginning.”

Watch the keynote to get a closer look at how, with its unique approach and culture of innovation, AWS is helping create powerful solutions without compromising on performance or cost.

Keynote with Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian

“This year, we are standing at the edge of another technological era,” says Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President of Data and AI at AWS. “Generative AI is augmenting human productivity in many unexpected ways, while also fueling human intelligence and creativity.” In this presentation, attendees explored the powerful relationship between humans, data, and AI that is unfolding right before our eyes.

Tune into the keynote to learn from Dr. Sivasubramanian and hear featured customers share real-world examples of how they’ve used data to support their generative AI use cases and create new customer experiences.

Partner Keynote with Dr. Ruba Borno

This AWS Partner Keynote was presented by Ruba Borno, Vice President of AWS Worldwide Channels and Alliances. Attendees learned how AWS works across industries and geographies to provide solutions, opportunities, and programs that drive collective prosperity.

“The key to accomplishing your dreams is to ensure you have the best team behind you,” says Borno. “And I’m talking about having the best Partner Network supporting you every step of the way. AWS is here for you to help our customers, and your customers, realize those dreams.”

Check out this keynote to hear from Dr. Borno and discover how AWS is connecting partners with higher-value opportunities and longer-term success.

Keynote with Dr. Werner Vogels

Making his 12th re:Invent appearance, Dr. Werner Vogels, Vice President and CTO at Amazon.com, covered best practices for designing resilient and cost-aware architectures.

“The great thing about migrating out of the whole hardware environment into the cloud is that we suddenly could build these architectures that we always wanted to build,” he says. “We no longer were constrained by the physicality of all those servers.”

Watch the keynote to see Dr. Vogels’s presentation, hear from featured customer speakers, and discover why AI is something every builder should consider when developing systems.

Breakout Sessions

AWS re:Invent breakout sessions are specialized, hour-long, lecture-style sessions that cover all types of topics. Whether you want to learn more about AI or ML, business applications, or cloud operations, you can watch every breakout session from re:Invent 2023 here.

How adidas revolutionizes digital systems to fuel a thriving business

Daniel Eichten, Vice President of Enterprise Architecture at adidas AG, and Paul Fryer, Head of Worldwide Solutions Architecture for Retail at AWS led this breakout session. They explored the evolution of product creation, data analytics, and the backbone of adidas’s operations—the enterprise resource planning system—and gained real-life insight into modernizing a business.

Tune into this breakout session to learn how adidas harnessed the power of technology to revolutionize vital aspects of its operations.

Powerful machine learning data strategies from The Very Group

In this session, Steve Pimblett, Chief Data Officer at The Very Group, and Ravi Bagal, General Manager of Retail and CPG at AWS, discuss how to turn data insights into actions, delighting customers with more personalized experiences.

Join to watch this breakout session to learn how The Very Group predicts product demand to optimize availability, prevent out-of-stock issues, and achieve a better forecast for improved customer satisfaction and net promoter scores.

ALDO Group finds the best pairing to optimize its order management

Led by Matthieu Houle, CIO at ALDO Group, and Justin Honaman, Head of the Worldwide Retail and CPG Go-To-Market team at AWS, this breakout session touches on how ALDO optimized its inventory management and fulfillment process. On AWS, the brand built a flexible order management system using a microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native Software as a Service, and headless (MACH) approach.

Watch this breakout session to hear how ALDO is building AI-powered extensions to find the most profitable way to fulfill each order based on near-real-time inventory data.

Lightning Talks

Composable commerce is an approach that makes it possible for retailers to select and assemble various commerce services and capabilities to tailor their digital environments. In this Lightning Talk, Paul Fryer, Worldwide Tech Lead of Retail and CPG, shares how tech leaders think composable commerce should be done on AWS.

Tune into this session and discover how AWS is helping retailers adopt this modern approach in the cloud.

Generative AI is poised to revolutionize the business landscape, transforming the way companies operate, innovate, and engage with customers. It has the possibility to open doors to unparalleled creativity and efficiency—but how do you unlock those doors within your own organization?

Watch this lightning talk to learn how to navigate generative AI in the consumer packaged goods industry.

Innovation Talks

Hosted by AWS thought leaders, Innovation Talks at re:Invent 2023 dove into the latest cloud technology topics, giving attendees an inside look at how organizations innovate on AWS.

Tune into these videos on demand and hear from industry leaders like Dr. Bratin Saha, Vice President of AI and ML at Amazon, Shaown Nandi, Director of Technology for Industries at AWS, and Francessca Vasquez, Vice President of AWS Professional Services, to name a few. Whatever your interests, you can gain valuable insights and learn how the cloud can bring your ideas to life.

Innovations and Insights for Retail and CPG

AWS re:Invent offers an unparalleled opportunity to learn how AWS helps Retail and CPG brands transform operations, reimagine customer experiences, and more—and this year did not disappoint. You can check out the AWS re:Invent 2023 website for more details and on-demand videos in case you weren’t on-site.

Thank you to all of our customers and partners for a great event. See you in 2024!