Scaling Enterprise Productivity Through Agentic AI and Workflow Automation - with Kuo Zhang of Alibaba.com

[Music] Welcome everyone to the AI and Business Podcast. I'm Matthew Damello, editorial director here at Emerge AI Research. Today's guest is KuO Zhang, president of OliBaba.com. For the holiday season here in the States, we wanted to feature exclusive audio from a recent interview we conducted with KuO this year's Co-Create event in Las Vegas hosted by OliBaba. The interview you'll hear today took place immediately after KuO's keynote at the event where he expanded on how a Genetic AI is lowering barriers to global sourcing for SMBs and reshaping how enterprises think about procurement, supplier discovery and operational efficiency. Throughout our conversation, he describes a future in which teams of any size can move from idea to execution with far fewer bottlenecks supported by real supplier data automated sourcing workflows in increasingly self-directed digital agents. KuO also highlights the practical workflow changes emerging from this shift, how AI reduces time spent on manual supplier communication, how automated sourcing and trade assurance, streamlined global transactions, how enterprises can enable employees to use AI to increase throughput and sales, engineering and customer operations, and where leaders are already seeing ROI through faster cycle times, expanded sourcing options, and greater resilience during periods of market volatility. A quick editor's note we originally recorded this audio strictly for event coverage on Emerge.com and thought it might be a little bit too raw for podcast listeners. But with the holiday week upon us and some diligent work from our audio team, we were able to ensure strong listenability and bring our subscribers an exclusive look at how one of the world's largest retail and technology organizations is thinking about the future of a Genetic AI and its impact on global supply chains. For more with KuO, you may also remember that earlier this year we featured him on our new YouTube channel. You can search for AI and business vision to value and enterprise AI on YouTube, where you can find our at length discussion with KuO covering more on how a Genetic AI is removing barriers that have long held back small and medium sized businesses in global sourcing. That's youtube.com/atemergeairesearch. Watch the full episode now and see how vision becomes value in enterprise AI. But first, are you driving AI transformation at your organization? Or maybe you're guiding critical decisions on AI investment strategy or deployment? If so, the AI and business podcast wants to hear from you. Each year, Emerge, AI research features hundreds of executive thought leaders, everyone from the CIO of Goldman Sachs, to the head of AI and Raytheon, and AI pioneers like Yasha of Benjiro. With nearly a million annual listeners, AI and business is the go to destination for enterprise leaders navigating real world AI adoption. You don't need to be an engineer or a technical expert to be on the show if you're involved with AI implementation, decision making, or strategy within your company, this is your opportunity to share your insights with a global audience of your peers. If you believe you can help other leaders move the needle on AI ROI, visit Emerge.com and fill out our thought leader submission form. That's emerge.com and click on be an expert. You can also click the link in the description of today's show on your preferred podcast platform. That's emerge.com/expert1. Again, that's emerj.com/expert1. We'll be right back with our conversation with Kuo after this brief message. AI agents accelerate workflows, but errors can multiply fast. Rubric Agent Cloud provides full visibility, enforces policies, and rewinds actions in minutes. It runs continuously, giving guardrails, tracking activity, and providing a safety net so teams can scale AI without risking critical operations. The segment is sponsored by Rubric Agent Cloud. If your business relies on AI agents, you can get exclusive early access to monitor, govern, and rewind their actions at Rubric.com. That's rubbri.com/rik.com/rubric.com And without further ado, here's our interview with Kuo. Now we're just about ready for today's conversation with Kuo. Just for some brief context, you'll note that I'm beginning the first question by describing the major points of Kuo's keynote speech at the Co-Create 2025 event in Las Vegas, which just wrapped a few moments before this interview was recorded. Let's tune in. I think it's one of the clearer visions I've seen of. This is going to change the way we think about getting the whole process done, because you're going to have all of these employees that you're disposal. I'm an old, my grandparents owned a cowboy in Parallel Street. They had to buy jeans in the time of Ronald Reagan and Prokure for folks. I only imagine what the business could have been if they had somebody they didn't need to pay a salary necessarily to do small business procurements. I would love to get your thoughts on what you think about, maybe this means overall for kind of competition between SMBs and also how can enterprises maybe endorse kind of the use of these sorts of tools in ways that are also going to accomplish their goals and maybe have some applications in the enterprise. You have been there in the presence, right? Yeah, absolutely. So this year actually we, there are more than 300,000 entrepreneurs come. It's nearly double the size of last year. And we need to close ticket. What is a week before? And many of them can be writing emails to us to kind of reopen and what to come. Because this is not the space, the room that we cannot hold too much. But you can feel that there is a passion of SMEs in order to be participated in this event and to be compete globally and leveraging global splenching as if this isn't what everybody wants here. And what blocks them to do so before is that the trust issues, you need spend too much time, you need expertise on the sourcing, on the language and the transportation, the money and the kind of active protection you can mention. And all the technology can help them to lower the barrier to kind of entry this kind of global competition and leveraging the global splenching. So this is a major to to think that we are talking to them. And we are using the agentic AI. So the first thing you can see about key and key word and such catalyst and click on one product and it's not right. And the other is this is right and communicates with the entire supplier is not online and then come back and do the same. Now you just disrupt your idea. Starting from kind of helping you to create some of the plans, product design, product help you do like it, you can help you to ask you to come and make this. So we reach out to the customer. Actually there are many product details we did not show today since the time limit. Yeah, there's a lot that we can help them, for example, to have the buyer to do the auto code, how the buyer to kind of using a secure way to do the payment recorded through the insurance. And help them with a different variety of us, kind of a different deliveries, local warehouse, cross-border kind of transport agents and you can take it. So now doing this kind of global source in a much much easier, then probably five or six years because of technology. Absolutely. And I think there's also, you know, don't sell yourself short in that as you mentioned on stage, a lot of it's built on the supplier data. Like you can't make these kinds of tools, you know, without the real supplier data. You may, you know, they're talking right now on stage about tariffs as kind of, and we're hearing a lot of the same attitudes between partners, suppliers, everybody saying, you know, hey, we're going to hold our hands and get through this. Of course we know it's not that easy. What do you think there are lessons that kind of carry over from pandemic into? They're very different situations, but they are externalities, let's say. They're not, they come from the outside and they disrupt normal business. And we've only had this so many years of a normal with a lot of data taken in between, right? That's all key. Do you think that, you know, maybe helps us prepare for like a moment that we're kind of seeing with the tariffs at all or is it completely normal? So for this year, the other girls on all of our top corn, in general, is more than 30%. And I just check out the data for September for the first couple of days, is also more than 33% of girls otherwise year to year. And for US, actually, is the other girls from April to now is also more than 20% compared last year. Which means that with more people elaborating digital supply chains, to back to your question, I think, from the mental level. principles for business the first one is Demand and supply Yeah, you have demand and you need to find the most efficient supplies to fulfill the demand and Was in between there are technology there are how to deliver fast how to save money This kind of stuff but the back to the beginning is that is our start from demand and Slice and then that how the things keep the words is simply right right? I think we we can't comment too much on the policy part but so the business Yeah, so we are providing how diversify the kind of solutions So you can pick supplier from all over the world and you can manage as the technology as much as possible Just to help to make sure you have a competitive edge Kind of fuck the business others. I think then kind of like the most actionable or most valuable data between the two and just ends up being like How fast could you change suppliers based on each tailored situation and Did you know for your particular area and retail manufacturing etc. We didn't get it You know kind of rip it up start again Go back from crown zero or was it merely just Having that moment as like as I was just hearing on stage before for walking in here About how all we need to kind of you know sit in lock arms with everybody that we're already doing business with and deepen those relationships I think either way you're getting a more New on speed because you have more data being detected since you know in pandemic even today But to me the real commonality between those times and these is that you might depending on this after C Folks changing all of their supplier base based on you know, but they're still completely different spaces Do you think we're gonna have or are you optimistic at all from all the kind of data you're taking for supply chains all over the world That will get a stronger sense of normal even with these kind of like abnormal events that have kind of you know a book ended Kind of decades so far I Pinned between pandemic and tariffs. It's too completely different things But also that you know over and over here again, and these are kind of man-made and artificial right that you know It's especially pandemic or especially the tariffs most obviously it's somebody You know putting the limitation on there. Do you think we're gonna get a long enough period that that might be considered normal Or is that kind of the nature of taking in all the data? You know it'll always be different. It'll always be novel. You just got to track off. This is best you can What I sing people are I'll just say focusing or Spending time too much is the body kind of change or turbulence in the near term, but it's more more less actually not focusing enough on the change that probably can Influence or can impact for a longer time So I hope being in this position since the two sources in the 17 so as you mentioned There's a lot of change including the same set that you mentioned every year. There's new kind of situation But what I see what not change the mountain supply The mountain supply also is this is the kind of fundamentals and the supply the supplies is more and more redundant more and more kind of Rich and the supplies are fulfilled in more kind of different ways than the supplies before and for the Demonside that we see more and more SMBs is a big pain So for each and every country actually the Obviously the internal trade is much bigger than the Kind of external trade. Yeah, so take Europe X example the inter-Europe trip probably is Two times or three times then Europe buy and sell outside Europe. Right. So why is that? That's the major reason is that people don't majority of the SMEs don't have the capabilities to do that before so they need to Pick up the phone calls on the base say the same language that they can trust so they can pay the money and You can kind of get the result got a got a grunt and if Technology platform data AI that can help you to lower the barrier every SMEs can be in the kind of global state I think that's in the long run is a bigger change to the world. Yeah Yes, and we hear we hear about this future a little bit like when we were doing internet adoption We heard about this future of Wi-Fi and that still talk about like 10ish years eight 10 years before really felt like it will we had mass adoption That's this is really the closest I've seen in a A lot of the folks that have been talking about agents up it really feels like you are the CEO of a five-person organization That might do a volume of a business that 20 years ago might need it twice that many people especially on the retail side What do you think that means for for the enterprise folks in terms of how to enable their own employees to take Best advantage of these tools because they're going to anyway and how best to you know keep up as an as an enterprise Right we how will kind of continue to talk at the last time and tell you that Each and our way for you how about has a Okay, our okay. I for AI Yeah, right so I think I about the calm you can see as an enterprise Yeah, but we are more than five thousand people there are sales people there are you the girls people marketing people the engineering So in vision I got a calm what do we see that each individual or each role Can leverage AI in different ways for example if you are an engineering They use in AI you can read much code and before and twice the code And every corner we have about the 300 ideas so that ideas More or less, but it's a long time that there's only 100 ideas can be applied each one because of the engineering capacity So now think about we at least and you can Yeah, make sure that we can move all things But the next next year when we cook great I can show you twice the idea that I already give you that there's one Sales is the same so they need to do things completely kind of repeat themselves every day now You can free some Of their repetitive works in databases so they can clear more about their customers Spend more of other customer services. I said that is one as well So you can name it to each and every interview or else You can find them how to use AI to do a bad sell Yeah Ever is a Twice efficiency or maybe sometimes ten times right and it sounds like who's going to survive is who can appropriately judge what that where they balance off in the market share the demand and supply versus What they have that there's a disposal to scale and does it meet meet that sweet spot Yeah, no matter if you're the small or the big word or even the enterprise Rapping up today's episode. I think there were at least three critical takeaways for enterprise leaders focused on data AI and global operations to take from our conversation today with KuOzong president of Alibaba dot com First agentech AI is beginning to close longstanding capability gaps in global sourcing Tasks that once required specialized expertise supplier discovery Communication quality evaluation and cross-border coordination are now becoming more accessible to smaller Teams that shift expands the competitive landscape and increases the urgency for larger enterprises to modernize procurement workflows Second AI enabled automation is already delivering measurable efficiency gains inside complex organizations from engineering to sales to Operational support leaders can unlock meaningful productivity increases by embedding AI in repeatable tasks and giving employees clear mandates to experiment Interate and improve on their workflows finally supply chain resilience is increasingly tied to data diversity and speed of response External disruptions may always be novel, but organizations that leverage AI to rapidly compare validate and transition between suppliers will maintain a stronger competitive edge Regardless of sector scale or market conditions Are you driving AI transformation at your organization or maybe your guiding critical decisions on AI investments? Strategy or deployment if so the AI and business podcast wants to hear from you each year Emerge AI research features hundreds of executive thought leaders everyone from the CIO of Goldman Sachs to the head of AI at Raytheon and AI pioneers like Yoshua Benjio With nearly a million annual listeners AI and business is the go-to destination for enterprise leaders navigating real-world AI adoption You don't need to be an engineer or a technical expert to be on on the show. If you're involved in AI implementation, decision making or strategy within your company, this is your opportunity to share your insights with a global audience of your peers. If you believe you can help other leaders move the needle on AIROI, visit Emerge.com and fill out our Thought Leaders submission form. We look forward to featuring your story. If you enjoyed or benefited from the insights of today's episode, consider leaving us a review on Apple podcasts and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or just like most about the show. Also, don't forget to follow us on X, formerly known as Twitter, @emerge and that spelled again, emerj, as well as our LinkedIn page. I'm your host, at least for today. Matthew D'Amello, editorial director here at Emerge AI Research. On behalf of Daniel Fagella, our CEO and head of research, as well as the rest of the team here at Emerge, thanks so much for joining us today and we'll catch you next time on the AI in Business Podcast.