Nakheel Malls, the retail arm of master developer Nakheel, has launched its data transformation initiative as part of a customer-centric strategy to benefit retailers and customers across Nakheel Malls’ assets.

Using machine learning algorithms and AI-enabled data products, the fully governed, advanced platform provides key insights to more than 3,000 tenants by studying retail habits, purchases and experiences of over 90 million customers.

Omar Khoory, Chief Hospitality and Assets Officer, Nakheel Malls, said: “In today’s digital era, it is more critical than ever to provide relevant data analytics to assist retailers and enhance our offerings to consumers. We are proud to partner with Artefact in this digital transformation and to embark on a realistic, empathic journey that will enable us to further understand our customers’ needs and provide our retail partners with in-depth analytics to support their business growth.”

Dr Oday Salim, Data Manager, Nakheel Malls, said: “With the rapid development of data technology, Nakheel Malls identified the need to adopt the latest advanced solutions to achieve our customer-centric strategy. Our cutting-edge analytics program has helped us to navigate the shift in customer expectations and needs as a result of the pandemic, and has fostered a change in company culture, making us more data driven. New use cases are being tested and integrated into retail operations leading to both machine learning and AI in a five-year plan.”

Rahul Arya, Managing Partner, Artefact Middle East, Africa, added: “Recent events have accelerated data transformation within the Middle East’s fast-paced retail sector. This data platform has enabled Nakheel Malls to respond quickly to the changing environment with a robust data strategy and advanced data use cases that enable the group to respond to customers across any time zone, location or device, and deliver outstanding customer experiences.”

The latest technology includes a state-of-the-art data lake that is constructed from a unique governance system. The five-year project plan aims to introduce retailers to new solutions to deliver tangible financial value, generate insights and support on building a solid data infrastructure for the entity.

As part of this digital growth strategy, Nakheel Malls recently introduced dragonmart.ae, an e-commerce platform that provides shoppers the ability to sort and discover over 35,000 products found at Dragon Mart across 11 high-level categories within the comfort of their homes.