E-commerce & Digital
Product categorisation at scale
Automatically assign products to the correct site taxonomy categories using title, description, and attributes. Removes a bottleneck on new product onboarding.
80–90%
reduction in categorisation time
Opportunity assessment
Minor improvement. Small efficiency gain with limited effect on overall turnover or bottom line.
Very easy to implement. Ready-to-use tools exist. Can be up and running in days or weeks with minimal technical resource.
Light data requirements. Uses straightforward inputs — documents, product descriptions, customer records — that are usually accessible with minimal prep.
Low risk. Limited external exposure. A human reviews output before it reaches anyone outside the team.
Very easy to absorb. Runs quietly in the background or gives people a helpful new input. Makes everyday work easier with almost no friction.
Tooling required
Things to consider
Walmart used predictive and generative AI to improve product categorisation across its catalogue, enabling AI-powered use-case search rather than individual item search (Walmart Global Tech).
Taxonomy clarity is the prerequisite — ambiguous or overlapping categories confuse the AI just as they confuse humans.
Exceptions handling: define a threshold below which the AI routes to human review rather than auto-assigning (e.g. confidence below X%).
Monitor accuracy monthly and retrain prompts when new categories are added or naming conventions change.
Misclassification has a direct impact on findability — products in the wrong category don't appear in the right search results or navigation paths. Prioritise accuracy over speed during calibration.
Experiment starter: Take 200 recently onboarded products that were manually categorised. Run the same products through a prompted LLM against your taxonomy and measure accuracy by category. If overall accuracy exceeds 90% with no individual category below 80%, the case for automation is made.
Go deeper in the playbook
Section — Opportunity Identification, including the AI Opportunity Assessment ScorecardSection — The Tooling LandscapeThis is an automation opportunity — see the relevant playbook section for how to approach it.More in E-commerce & Digital
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AI Transformation Playbook
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