Ep091: The Business of Better Decisions: PDI's Journey in Retail and Energy Tech

PDI Technologies’ Steve Antonakakis shares how his company is implementing generative AI across their fuel and retail technology ecosystem through a practical, customer-focused approach using Amazon Bedrock.

Topics Include:

• PDI's COO/CTO discussing generative AI implementation
• Practical step-by-step approach to AI integration
• Testing in real-world settings with customer feedback
• AWS Bedrock and Nova models exceeded expectations
• Early adoption phase with huge potential
• Fuel/retail industry processes many in-person transactions
• PDI began in 1983 as ERP provider
• Grew through 33+ acquisitions
• Provides end-to-end fuel industry solutions
• Owns GasBuddy and Shell Fuel Rewards
• Processes millions of transactions daily
• Generative AI fits into their intelligence plane architecture
• AWS Bedrock integrates well with existing infrastructure
• Focus on trusted, controlled, accountable AI
• Productizing AI features harder than traditional features
• Created entrepreneurial structure alongside regular product teams
• Team designed to fail fast but stay customer-focused
• AI features can access databases without disrupting applications
• Customers want summarization across different business areas
• AI provides insights and actionable recommendations
• Conversational AI replaces traditional reporting limitations
• Working closely with customers to solve problems together
• Beyond prototyping phase, now in implementation
• AWS Nova provides excellent cost-to-value ratio
• Focus on measuring customer value over immediate profitability
• RFP use case saved half a million dollars
• Early prompts were massive, now more structured
• Setting realistic customer expectations is important
• Data security approach same as other applications
• Treating AI outputs with same data classification standards

Participants:

• Steve Antonakakis – COO & CTO, Retail & Energy, PDI Technologies

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