Winning an AWS Award

An initiative I spearheaded within the company received the prestigious AWS Market Disruptor Award this year.

In the past, I worked on internal improvements like engineering processes, DevOps procedures, and exploring nascent technologies like Flutter. Our attention this year was on generative AI, a hot topic among industry leaders.

The first thing we did was use Amazon Code Whisperer to boost developer productivity. Our initial focus was on internal applications for employee efficiency and process optimization. Our AWS account manager and CEO convinced us to consider how generative AI could benefit our clients.

In a stroke of luck, one of our retail clients asked about using AI to identify objects in photos. For retailers and brands, this was a big deal. Mega-brands use planograms to arrange products on shelves. Compliance with these designs usually requires manual verification at every location, a laborious process.

We used Amazon’s AWS image recognition models, trained on popular products. We didn’t solve the planogram challenge we set out to solve, but we identified products and matched them. Identifying products from photos taken at varied angles and light conditions was challenging enough. AWS awarded us a Market Disruptor Award for our innovative solution.

Success is often a lagging indicator of skills and processes.Our recent win is not just a reflection of what we’ve done recently, but also what we’ve done all along.

We’ve built a culture of experimentation in our company over the years. Each year, we survey the emerging waves, trying to catch up and build upon them, curious where they might take us. This annual pursuit has become a well-oiled machine, streamlining the process of discerning which waves to chase, what kind of proof-of-concepts to construct, and how best to determine their utility for us and our clients. The AWS award is the culmination of everything we have done so far.

Happy to end the year with an award.