My good friend Jeremy Culshaw and I have been talking about artificial intelligence on and off for over a year now. Jeremy is an absolute tech veteran and is currently focused on helping organizations navigate the AI frontier at Signa North.
We recently decided to record one of our ongoing discussions to explore what true AI readiness actually entails.
The truth is, most organizations are asking the wrong questions right now.
They see a shiny new AI tool and immediately want to buy it.
But they don’t have the data foundation to support it.
Welcome to the kickoff of our new Summer Series: Getting Ready for AI.
Over the next few weeks, we are going to dive deep into how retailers can get their spatial data, store layouts, and real estate portfolios ready for the AI era.
While our focus will heavily target store planning and brick-and-mortar real estate, these core lessons are incredibly relevant to every single business trying to navigate this evolution.
The Current Era of AI: Cost vs. Growth
Right now, we are firmly in the efficiency and cost-reduction stage of AI.
It is about saving hours, cutting back on manual processes, and streamlining workflows.
But that is just the warm-up act. Very soon, the switch will flip.
We will enter the competitive advantage and revenue-generation stage of AI.
This is where AI will help you make faster layout decisions, predict design trends, and optimize physical spaces in real time.
But you cannot generate revenue with broken, stagnant data.
If you want to reap the benefits of that second stage, you have to build the foundation today.
What We Learned From Our Own Failure
At DedON, we have been testing and experimenting with AI tools over the last couple of years.
Let me be honest: not every project has delivered an immediate ROI.
In fact, some of them havn’t worked at all.
But those “productive failures” taught us more than our successes.
They showed us that our current day-to-day work habits and documentation processes aren’t built for a machine to read.
The hurdle isn’t the technology—it is our internal discipline.
If your underlying store drawings are outdated, incomplete, or messy, even the most sophisticated AI model will fail.
Before we can successfully use AI, we have to evolve how we work every single day.
What’s Coming This Summer
This series isn’t just about high-level theory.
It is about practical, hands-on strategies for store planning, real estate, and design teams.
Here is a sneak peek at what we will be addressing week by week:
- Artifacts vs Assets – evolving how we see our data
- The AI Sequence: Why you must align your People and Processes before you spend a single dollar on AI Technology.
- Digital Twins and the “data octopus” concept, which automates drawing updates using real-time data sources to let designers prioritize strategy over maintenance.
We want this to be an active, evolving conversation.
We want to hear from you.
What is your team struggling with when it comes to spatial data?
Where are your biggest data bottlenecks?
Drop your thoughts in the comments below. Your feedback will help us shape the focus of this series as we move through the summer.
Let’s get ready for the future, together.