Board advisory for a biotech company on agentic AI across e-commerce

Context

I advised the board of a biotech company with a large, technical product catalogue serving scientists and research customers. Leadership wanted a board-level view of where agentic AI could create value across both the commercial front end and internal development workflows.

The challenge

The opportunity spanned very different parts of the business. On the commercial side, scientists needed to find and order the right products quickly from a deep and complex catalogue — a discovery and advisory problem where the wrong answer wastes expensive research time. Internally, development and data teams carried repetitive engineering and analysis work that slowed delivery. Each area demanded a different agent pattern, risk profile and sequencing.

What we did

I advised the board on agentic AI options across two domains:

• E-commerce agents to improve the online customer journey — from product discovery to technical support, helping scientists find and order the right products faster.
• Customer advisory agents capable of understanding complex product catalogues and providing informed guidance.

For each, I set out where agents fit, what good looked like, and how to sequence the work so the organisation built confidence and capability rather than taking on too much at once.