The Loblaw Enterprise AI Journey

How one of Canada's largest retailers is rebuilding its data foundation for the era of agentic AI. In this session from the Big Data & Analytics Summit Canada, Charu Pajuri, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Data Science at Loblaw, breaks down what it takes to become a fully data-powered enterprise by 2030. As agentic AI, real-time personalization, and cross-channel automation drive real transformation, long-established organizations are rethinking how their data is structured, governed, accessed, and operationalized at scale. Charu shares the practical moves behind that shift. Inside this talk: • Rearchitecting the data foundation for real-time intelligence, moving from retrospective reporting to operational decision-making powered by streaming, event-driven data • Building a unified governance and access layer with consistent security, lineage, and quality controls across thousands of products and channels, which becomes critical once agentic AI systems inherit permissions and take autonomous actions • Operationalizing AI as a core enterprise capability through restructured product teams, redefined platform ownership, and cross-functional delivery models that shorten deployment cycles If you work in data engineering, analytics, AI strategy, or enterprise architecture, this is a clear look at how to modernize the right layers first and accelerate innovation across a complex business. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ UPCOMING EVENTS 🔹 6th Annual Data Analytics for Public Sector October 21 & 22, 2026 | Old Mill Toronto Hotel 🔹 7th Annual Big Data West November 3 & 4, 2026 | Fairmont Pacific Rim, Vancouver BC 🔹 14th Annual Data Analytics for Healthcare December 8 & 9, 2026 | Old Mill Toronto Hotel ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ #BigData #AgenticAI #DataGovernance #DataEngineering #ArtificialIntelligence #DataAnalytics #RealTimeData #EnterpriseArchitecture #AIStrategy #DataScience #RetailTech #DataTransformation #Loblaw #BigDataCanada