How the Otto Group is safely supporting its employees into the AI era

Generative AI is developing rapidly and offers enormous potential, but it also requires a broad understanding of the technology and secure application practices. For many employees, entering the AI age can seem complex and challenging at first. It is therefore crucial to provide low-threshold access to the technology, which reduces reservations and comprehensively empowers employees to take advantage of the opportunities offered by AI while understanding the risks. The Otto Group recognised early on that the future viability of the company depends largely on whether it succeeds in taking its employees along on this journey.

On 18 September 2023, the Otto Group was one of the first German companies to launch its own internally developed, data protection-compliant AI assistant: ogGPT. The clear goal: to give all employees secure and easy access to generative AI. There is deliberately no obligation to use it and no KPIs. Instead, the focus is on experimenting and gathering personal experience in order to develop a deep understanding of the possibilities and limitations of generative AI. In this way, ogGPT not only paves the way for a new way of working, but also enables low-threshold entry into the AI age for the entire workforce.

The introduction of ogGPT was accompanied by a comprehensive package of measures focused on knowledge transfer, skills development, networking and inspiration. These measures fell on fertile cultural ground, prepared by nine years of cultural change within the Otto Group. Values such as openness, flexibility, participation and personal responsibility form the ideal basis for successfully integrating new technologies into everyday working life.

Two years after the launch, an interdisciplinary team is still working on the further development of ogGPT and is constantly expanding the range of training courses on offer:

• Training opportunities for every step: from introductory sessions explaining basic functions to intensive prompting workshops and the group-wide ‘Discover AI’ community with its own conference and hackathons with partners such as Microsoft and Google – all colleagues are catered for according to their prior knowledge and role. The aim is to impart knowledge, build skills and promote networking.
• Inspiration and creative application: Formats such as ‘Use Case of the Week’ present specific applications with step-by-step instructions and sample prompts. The internal ‘GenAI@Work’ award also recognised creative and value-adding GenAI use cases to encourage innovation and participation across departments.
• ogGPT grows with needs: The AI assistant itself is also constantly evolving – always geared towards the needs of employees. Features such as the marketplace enable group-wide sharing of prompting templates, and CustomGPTs offer tailor-made AI assistants. One example of a CustomGPT is the group-wide strategic AI guides, which answer questions about the responsible use of AI and provide information on the five basic principles of responsible AI.

The results after more than two years are impressive:

• Over 10,000 active monthly users generate more than 420,000 messages per month.
• Internal surveys show that users save time with ogGPT and that the vast majority (around 80 per cent) enjoy their work more.
• The Otto Group is building up central competencies for the AI age across the group and strengthening the company's future viability by creating a broad understanding of the new technology.

The internal ‘Discover AI’ community founded at the start is now called ‘Adopt AI’. This shows that after two years of using generative AI in everyday work, the first phase of experimentation at the Otto Group is coming to an end. The focus is now shifting to identifying further specific business use cases.

With ogGPT, the Otto Group shows how corporate digital responsibility can be actively practised. Low-threshold, secure access to AI, comprehensive training opportunities and a culture of experimentation not only involve employees in the digital transformation, but also actively empower them to help shape it. In this way, the Otto Group ensures that the digital future of the company is a shared journey in which everyone can participate and responsibly use the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence.