At Opticon 2025, Optimizely delivered a bold message: the future of commerce belongs to AI-driven operations. With Opal for Commerce, artificial intelligence moves beyond pilots and edge cases. It becomes an infinite workforce — always on, always scaling with demand.
For commerce leaders, this moment signals a rewrite of the growth equation: expanding capacity without expanding headcount, automating backlogs, and freeing teams to focus on strategy, creativity, and market leadership.
Why This Matters Now
AI adoption is no longer optional. Backlogs, rising customer expectations, and shrinking margins make traditional scaling unsustainable.
Bain & Company’s 2025 Technology Report shows that companies scaling AI across workflows are already achieving 10% to 25% gains in EBITDA. This proves that operationalizing AI isn’t just an experiment — it’s a measurable driver of efficiency and speed-to-market.
For commerce leaders, the takeaway is clear: AI-driven agents will soon be monitoring orders, generating product content, and running campaigns faster than human teams ever could. The organizations that prepare now will be the ones customers — and AI systems — recognize and reward.
Solving the Bandwidth Problem in Commerce
Commerce teams have always been limited by human bandwidth. Backlogs of product updates, unfulfilled orders, incomplete campaigns, and manual data work drain resources. Teams spend more time reacting to operational fires than creating long-term growth strategies.
Opal for Commerce changes that equation. By embedding agent-driven workflows into the platforms commerce teams already use, AI takes on repetitive but critical tasks. Content generation, product data validation, translations, campaign setup, and order monitoring can all run in the background, continuously managed by AI agents that never stop.
The impact goes beyond efficiency. It’s a cultural shift: when execution is automated, teams gain space to focus on the bigger questions that move markets — Are we pricing for growth? Are we reaching the right segments? Where do we build lasting competitive advantage?
Opal for Commerce: Frequently Asked Questions
What is Opal for Commerce? Opal for Commerce is Optimizely’s AI platform that embeds agent-driven workflows into commerce operations, automating repetitive tasks and scaling capacity.
How does Opal improve commerce workflows? It continuously handles product content creation, data validation, campaign execution, and order monitoring — freeing teams to focus on strategy.
What do I need to implement Opal for Commerce? Businesses need clean product data, unified identity (OTID/ODID), updated Optimizely versions, and integrated systems like GA4, CRM, and loyalty platforms.
AI Commerce Automation, Built with Intention
What makes Opal for Commerce stand out is its deliberate architecture:
- Persistent context and memory: Brand rules, customer data, and analytics inform every output.
- Familiar access points: Slack, Teams, Optimizely apps, loyalty systems, and OptiGraph.
- No-code orchestration: Any team can design and run workflows without technical specialists.
Opal has been built with purpose: to serve as a fabric of automation that blends into how commerce teams already operate.
Practical AI Use Cases for Commerce Leaders
The first wave of Opal use cases addresses the bottlenecks commerce leaders face daily:
- Order monitoring with proactive exception handling
- Campaign execution running continuously in the background
- AI product content creation and translation scaled across markets
By addressing these daily choke points, Opal helps commerce leaders clear the path to growth.
Opal for Commerce: What’s Available Now and What’s Next
Configured Commerce
- Now: Structured data schema for LLM discovery, Opal chat, AI product descriptions, single-item translations (bulk coming soon), Vertex AI search (open beta), field mapping (headed to GA).
- Next: Restriction Group Agent — the first packaged, out-of-the-box AI agent.
Commerce Connect
- Now: Opal chat via CMS 12, AI product descriptions, translations (phase one), Optimizely product recommendations add-on.
- Next: Promotions Agent (beta this year), Google search integration (early next year), catalog management assistant (under review), and an Opal Tool for OptiGraph
How to Prepare Your Business for an AI Workforce
Success with Opal doesn’t come from flipping a switch. It requires preparation:
- Unify identity: Migrate to OTID/ODID for consistent identity across products.
- Stay current: Install the latest versions (e.g., CMS NuGet for Commerce Connect).
- Integrate critical systems: GA4, CRM, loyalty platforms, and custom APIs.
- Prioritize data readiness: Structured product data, clean APIs, schema.org markup.
- Optimize for AI-first discovery: Experiment with AEO (AI Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization).
Readiness is what separates experimentation from scale. The leaders investing in these fundamentals today will be the first to see AI deliver real business outcomes.
The Future of AI-Driven Commerce
With Opal for Commerce, Optimizely shows a future where teams rise above backlogs, AI handles execution continuously, and human talent is redirected toward creativity, strategy, and innovation.
Leaders who prepare today — with clean data, structured content, and composable systems — won’t just adopt Opal. They’ll gain an infinite workforce, expanding capacity, resilience, and competitive edge in an AI-first commerce world.
Ready to Explore Opal for Commerce?
If you’d like to see how Opal can transform your operations — from roadmap to implementation — contact us. Our team can help you prepare your data, design your workflows, and turn AI into a scalable advantage.
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