Colgate-Palmolive keeps humans central to its AI strategy, CDAO says

Colgate-Palmolive says it keeps humans in the loop across all its AI work to drive business value, Diana Schildhouse, the company's chief data and analytics officer, told ZDNET in a one-to-one video interview. Her team builds, deploys and embeds AI-enabled solutions globally, taking a human-centered approach that begins with understanding business processes.

Schildhouse said the work includes human-centered design and UX/UI research to ensure tools are intuitive, and that marketers can "get access to better and more ideas faster." She added that "People must be using AI as a tool to help them in their process, versus simply offloading work onto some of these tools." Colgate frames AI through horizontal elements — shared tools and foundations to boost productivity — and vertical elements that target priority areas such as innovation and demand generation.

Schildhouse said the company aims to pilot centrally developed solutions and then "start with the pilot and scale globally." Local teams are encouraged to explore use cases in governed environments. The company created an internal AI Hub where employees can test AI assistants and apps after mandatory training, and a community of AI ambassadors shares ideas across divisions and markets.

Governance and measurement underpin the approach: guardrails and risk management, required training, and a framework to assess impact.

Key Topics

Business, Colgate-palmolive, Diana Schildhouse, Ai Hub, Ai Governance, Data Analytics