Dr. Glenn Omura, Associate Professor, Michigan State University, Broad College of Business

By Dr. Glenn Omura

Earlier this year I spoke with Manoj Saxena, General Manager of Watson Solutions at IBM, about developing a scale-to-measure customer engagement. We agreed that as businesses look for ways to retain existing customers and attract new ones, the question of what resonates with consumers and makes them loyal customers is increasingly top of mind.

In my research and work as a marketing professor, I’ve seen how organizations have succeeded in marketing to various population segments, and also how they’ve fallen short of their customers’ expectations.

The traditional way of marketing is no longer sufficient, particularly when dealing with a younger, tech-savvy digital consumer – the Millennial. Research shows that Millennials are optimistic, confident and pragmatic, are seeking more personalized attention and engagement. Smart businesses need to make sure they’re meeting those needs. As companies increasingly apply technology to satisfy the daily consumer demand for greater individual productivity and immediacy, they may be giving up relationship-building for the sake of efficiency.  

Can companies have both? 

At MichiganStateUniversity, we are developing a measure of engagement that we will use to evaluate whether technology can deliver a desired level of engagement and secure the company-customer relationship. Our customer engagement scale measures three dimensions of customer engagement – the degree to which a company/brand energizes or excites a consumer; builds enthusiasm for the brand; and enmeshes, or captures, the attention of the consumer with the brand or company. 

With smartphones and tablets never out of arm’s reach, Millennials are leading the trend toward increased digital engagement. It is estimated that there will be more than 10 billion mobile devices by 2016, outpacing the human population. Numbers like these indicate that the digital consumer is here to stay and businesses would be well advised to adapt quickly. Given the demand for immediacy, and the sheer volume of online information, it is crucial to be able to measure customer engagement, pinpoint how and where engagement can be improved, and deliver a better engaged experience. 

Whereas “traditional” consumers might see an advertisement on TV or in a magazine and visit a store to seek out information and make an in-person purchase decision, Millennials operate a little differently. They may see an ad on TV, grab their smartphone off the couch next to them, surf the Web for more information and make an on-the-fly online purchase. How can retailers increase their chances that these digital, Millennial consumers will make a purchase and, better yet, become a return customer? 

One of the things we’ve seen in our research is a strong correlation between social media and customer engagement. Those who are more engaged with a brand, also interact more about the brand via multiple social media. Millennials are very active online and looking for ways to engage.  

Have a question for your brand? You can send a tweet saying exactly what you want in 140 characters — but there’s still a wait time and the response may be limited in context.  

Need advice on the best product for your unique needs? You can perform a search, but there’s no one to guide you towards the most evidence-based recommendation, amidst a sea of forums, blogs and online opinions.

Successfully engaging consumers can have multiplicative positive effects in the social net.

Now is the perfect time to discuss new ways of understanding and reaching today’s digital consumers.

The Millennial consumers that marketers seek to engage may be tech savvy, and may have a range of devices at their disposal, but even in the age of all things digital, they could still benefit from an insightful, easy to access guide to ensure their decisions are well-informed and on the trajectory towards optimizing their consumption choices.

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In related news, this week IBM unveiled the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, a technology designed to crunch big data and help brands deepen their engagement with customers who want fast personalized and mobile experiences.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, IBM Smarter Planet, ibm watson, Michigan State University, mobile computing, smarter analytics, smarter marketing, smarter social business, social business, social media, Watson

Teddy Goff

 Teddy Goff led a team of more than 200 people focused on digital media for President Obama’s re-election campaign. They generated more than 133 million video views, developed innovative tools to build grassroots communities, and raised more than $690 million. Recently, he and two colleagues formed a strategic marketing consultancy, Precision Strategies. Here, Goff talks about the importance of cultivating relationships and how President Obama’s re-election campaign ultimately relied on the effective use of predictive analytics.

What was the digital campaign’s key contribution  to President Obama’s re-election?

 It put supporters back into a primary role. We realized the most important thing we could do on the digital side was to cultivate relationships with the supporters on e-mail, Facebook, Twitter. We wanted to keep them inspired, engaged and informed. If we gave those people a reason to hit the retweet button every now and again, hit the share button, they could reach almost everyone in the United States more powerfully than we as a campaign operation ever could. President Obama on election day had about 34 million Facebook fans. Those people were friends with 98 percent of the U.S.-based Facebook population, which is more than the number of people who vote.

Click here to view the embedded video.

 Why are social networks so powerful in politics and business?

Social networking technologies are giving ordinary people more resources, more access to information and to each other. People are so turned off to politics today. They’re turned off to political advertising. But they trust their friends. It’s the same in business. Every business is going to be increasingly relying on ordinary people to transmit their messages. Everyday people can do a lot of damage if they’re not getting a positive experience, or they can become the best marketing engine a business could hope for.

 Did you deliberately craft a system of engagement across platforms?

 We tried to think about our relationships in as holistic a way as possible. Political campaigns have often thought about online supporters as being a different constituency than offline supporters; volunteers as being different from donors. But most volunteers donate and most donors volunteer. So you’re able to get a much more complete picture of a person if you integrate all sources and we had some success doing that. We wound up toward the end with a unified database that pulled in donor data, online data from clicks, and volunteer data, as well as commercial data. That gave us a much more comprehensive picture of who people were, so we could serve them better.

 Can you talk about the importance of authenticity in an age of social media? 

 It’s simple. You can’t fake it. You cannot use a lot of banner advertising or a clever tweet to paper over the fact that your product is no good or your corporate values are awful or that you don’t treat people well. All of these changes in technology are making companies be better because they’ve got no choice. They can’t get away with not being authentic. Sure, your tweets should be clever and your banner ads should be great, but all of that stuff decreases in importance as the Internet imposes greater accountability and visibility into the business.

 Do you have any advice for how companies and can be more agile in this world of real-time information?

 Well, the first thing I would talk about is structure. I do some consulting with large corporations that have a marketing department and a sales department and a PR department and a communications department and maybe a brand department. It’s an organizational scheme that pre-dates the Internet. That may have worked for creating a TV ad or a press release, but that’s not a process conducive to firing off a tweet out during the Super Bowl blackout because every department is fighting over the new toy. By contrast, in the Obama campaign, we didn’t have to deal with legacy systems, and so there was never a question that digital would be a free-standing department co-equal to everything else. As a result, we didn’t have to have a cross-departmental battle over every last thing or argue our case to a manager who was coming at things from a completely different point of view. I guess the point is that certain structures and incentive systems prevent agility. It’s better to not have to contend with that.

 How did you use predictive analytics?

 We predicted where people stood, how likely they were to vote, and even the likelihood that our contact would have an effect. Our analytics team not only predicted how people were going to vote but also how people were going to vote at various times of day. In a way, the entire campaign was predicated on a couple of big predictive models. A campaign has a finite number of door knocks or phone calls that they can make or commercials that they can run. So the whole ballgame is making sure you use those resources as efficiently as possible. You never, ever want to send a volunteer to go knock on a door where the person is not going to vote for President Obama because that’s one fewer door knock you can make. There were certain situations where we determined that a token knock actually had a counterproductive effect. So we weren’t only looking for undecided voters; we were looking for persuadable voters likely to be moved in the right direction. That’s all predictive modeling.

 What’s next in your career?

 Social media and the Internet are forcing people and organizations and governments to do better work and treat people in a more responsible way. Being involved in that, I think, is a real privilege. I’ve done that in the political world. Doing it in corporate settings or with non-profits sounds like a pretty fun way to keep that going. I do think that certain kinds of injustices, whether it’s bad behavior by companies or politicians, are inevitably going to go away. But it makes a big difference whether they go away in 10 years because people like me are screaming for change at the top of their lungs or in 100 years because the practitioners wind up drowning in the rising tide that they didn’t see coming. Look at what’s happening right now around marriage equality. The issue has completely turned around in nine years and the Internet is driving that. It’s probably inevitable that this issue will be resolved, but I’m a 27-year old gay man and I’d like to see this issue resolved by the time I’m 35 and not 50. The Internet gives people like me the ability push things more quickly than they otherwise could be. I think that’s a good thing, and a good way to spend one’s time and energy.

Technorati Tags: IBM, obama, Teddy Goff

Troy Kanter, COO of Kenexa, an IBM company

By Troy Kanter

Successful organizations typically recognize three critical facets of their workforce. For these companies, it’s all about capability (what the workforce already knows); capacity (what it has the ability to learn); and culture (what it can do collectively).

Understanding the three C’s is just the first step in the process of creating a Smarter Workforce. In my experience, it’s critical to answer five key questions regarding the design of the workforce to help ensure success, both for the employee and the organization.

1. What are the core components that are critical to the success of your organization?

Much like buying a car, what feature or capability denotes a successful purchase? Is it safety, gas mileage, speed or something else? It’s the same with business. For some companies, they need their workforce to deliver tailored solutions for customers. For others, it’s important to deliver top-of-line customer service, or expertise or creative ideas.

2. What are the job “families” within your workforce that are critical to success?

In other words, what job families will help set your business apart from your competitors? You can determine this by analyzing workforce data and pinpointing the critical areas that impact your bottom line most. For example, one company we worked with analyzed its data to discover that customer service was the No. 1 driver to sales. When they started focusing on delivering better customer service, profits rose.

3. Now that you recognize your most critical job family, how do you attract the very best people for those jobs?

By analyzing your workforce through the scope of human insights and behavioral science, you can create a blueprint that helps you understand the capacity, capability and cultural tendencies of your most successful employees and discover ways to find more people who are like them. Until now, these characteristics were determined only by feelings and intuition. When you attract and hire the right people for the right job the first time, your employees are more engaged, turnover falls and productivity rises.

4. What motivates or demotivates your best talent?

This starts by knowing where and how to source the right people (both internally and externally) by administering assessments and employee engagement surveys that test for the attributes your workforce needs to be successful. You also must know your current workforce in terms of skill and experiences. A Smarter Workforce motivates its employees based on what they know about their most successful people.

5. What tools do you need to empower your workforce and measure success?

Smart companies use enterprise social tools to build relationships and skills, provide feedback and deliver information that is timely and useful. They survey employees to assess engagement and drive performance. And they use data analytics to glean insights into their workforce that were never available until now.

When companies discover the answers to these questions, they create a Smarter Workforce. A workforce where time-to-hire is reduced, productivity is increased, turnover is lowered and retention is increased—in turn, the business is able to get products to market faster, increase flexibility, share collective intelligence, be more creative and innovative, drive higher revenue growth and truly understand how employees impact the bottom line.

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For more information about Smarter Workforce, please see IBM’s POV* in today’s Wall Street Journal and view additional resources here.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, Big Data analytics, IBM smarter analytics, IBM Smarter Planet, innovation, Kenexa, Smarter HR, Smarter Workforce, social business, talent acquisition

Michael Zerbs,Vice President, IBM Risk Analytics

By Michael Zerbs

Sensitivity around risk management is no longer solely a concern for large financial services organizations. In an economy still freshly scarred by the global financial crisis, what we are seeing is a pervasive questioning of the fundamental assumptions that large organizations, and individual investors so easily took for granted pre-crisis.

Questions that are now top of mind include, do I fully understand risk exposures across my organization? Can I trust my governance processes to sufficiently ensure accurate risk reporting? Can I accurately quantify the riskiness of a transaction? And, is my point of reference for riskiness really reliable?

These questions – while shaped by evolving risk regulation – are business issues, not compliance issues. Organizations in a wide variety of industries now understand more than ever that risk is intrinsically bound to decision making, and that navigating this relationship between risk and decision making is critical for performance. Our clients are challenged to operate and perform optimally in an environment that is increasingly complex, regulated and competitive.  However, thanks to analytics they now have the tools at their disposal to harness insights that simply were not previously available.

Click here to view the embedded video.

IBM is excited to be leading the charge in this space, investing in key technological advancements that will address the evolving risk needs faced by our clients.

Of course, technology alone is not the answer. The successful adoption of an enterprise risk management platform requires a truly pervasive approach to risk management. To that end, IBM has sponsored The Risk Enabled Enterprise – a two-year research initiative by Chartis Research, the leading provider of research and analysis for risk technology. Research will cover key enablers such as culture, organizational structure, data, systems and processes.

To learn more about this research initiative, see last week’s blog by John Macdonald. I explore a similar theme in my latest editorial article, with a focus on trust. That is, trust in the quality and reliability of the underlying data and operational processes, trust in the integrity of the analytics, and trust in the management processes driving reliable actions emanating from risk insights.

We explored these topics and many more and from a variety of angles at Vision 2013, IBM’s premier global conference for finance, risk and incentive compensation professionals.  If you missed it, I encourage you to check out the Livestream of the Risk keynote session.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, Big Data analytics, Financial Services, IBM Smarter Planet, innovation, risk management, smarter analytics, smarter financial services

William Fuessler, Financial Transformation Leader, IBM Global Business Services

By William Fuessler

I have always loved the finance profession, and thrived on the challenging nature of the business.

No two days, no two weeks, or two months are ever the same.

Change is virtually the only constant in today’s business. Within the past decade, the rising forces of digitization, globalization and Big Data have accelerated the pace of change and have made the landscape fiercely more competitive.

Having an intimate view of the business, finance leaders have access and insight over details large and small related to business unit performance, costs, trends in customer growth and paths to innovation. They know the peaks and valleys, the risks and rewards, and what’s working, and what’s not.

Armed with this insight, finance leaders have the power to extend their influence over decisions related to a broad set of priorities related to corporate spend, new product development, customer growth strategies, R&D, HR/talent investments, and acquisition strategies just to name a few areas. 

But knowing the business isn’t sufficient anymore. Maintaining the financial integrity of the business is a given. To stay ahead, CFOs need to nimbly anticipate and respond to change. The winners can proactively influence business strategy and predict certain outcomes.

Today we are convening a forum with an esteemed group of 100 CFOs and CIOs in NYC to discuss the evolving role of the CFO, the role that technology, process, data and skills play in the enterprise, and the threats and opportunities associated with Big Data and advanced analytics. I am excited to engage in a dialogue with my finance and IT peers about the future of my function, something I care deeply about.

This much is clear: we are at an inflection point – and the CFO’s role is on the verge of change. It’s not about keeping score and analyzing the past – but about having the headlights and insight to capture the growth opportunities that matter. The recent IBM IBV CFO Study has found that CFOs who excel at both using analytics for business insight and driving finance efficiency continue to outperform their peers across all phases of the economic cycle.

The CFO can be the pacesetter to bring the discipline of the back office to the front office. The true change agents will drive business model innovation to drive a continuous cycle of transformation. That’s the shining promise, power and potential of the profession in the future.

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Follow the discussion at www.ibm.com/finance.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, Big Data analytics, CFO, chief financial officer, IBM Smarter Planet, innovation, smarter analytics

Kim Whitler, Contributor for the Forbes CMO Network and Professor at Indiana University

By Kim Whitler

What are the biggest challenges facing marketers across the globe? According to a hot-off-the-presses study conducted globally by IBM (500 marketing managers) across 15 different industries, creating growth (through the acquisition of new customers) and sustaining growth (through superior loyalty) is at the very top.  Forty-two percent of respondents suggested that acquiring new customers and 36 percent suggested driving loyalty and satisfaction were the biggest challenges facing their organizations.

While these results aren’t earth-shattering as it is likely that a survey a decade ago would have yielded a similar pattern, what is surprising is the items at the bottom.

Only 21 percent of the respondents suggested that measuring ROI was the most challenging problem they faced, behind branding, leveraging data, understanding and effectively using social channels, and creating positive experiences for consumers. A few years ago, measuring ROI was at the top of everybody’s list. This perhaps suggests a sign of the times – that a tough marketplace, increased competition, a more global marketplace, and more savvy consumers has made growth especially challenging.

Other key findings from the survey suggest that the marketers who are driving better firm results are doing something different than their less successful counterparts.  They tend to be significantly more adept at tracking, technology, and analytics and use these tools to develop more sophisticated and adaptable solutions. They are more engaged in all customer service interactions and tend to personalize marketing offers. In short, stronger firm-wide leaders are more engaged in all customer interaction, and seem to have greater competency in what is necessary to be successful today. 

What Does This Mean For Marketers?

1. Marketers Matter: While the importance, value, and role of marketers – and marketing – in the firm may be debated, this suggests that marketers are focusing on what they can uniquely deliver, which is growth. Many functions are focused on internal operations and are not directly responsible for creating and sustaining growth in the same way that marketing is. This data suggests that when it comes to building growth, marketers are focused on being the growth engine for the firm.
2. Learn From the Successful: With unprecedented change and the plethora of articles talking about what marketers need to do to manage growth (e.g., manage big data, collaborate with finance and IT, integrate an omni-channel world, etc.) what needs to be done is clear. What isn’t clear is how to do it. A next step from this research that would be valuable is to create case studies of what the top marketers are actually doing that enables them to be successful. While there are a myriad of conferences for C-level marketers, what is missing is a business-school like approach to understanding how to solve these complex problems. A 1 hour discussion can’t really completely dissect the challenges associated with making this happen.
3. Acquire the Right Skills: This research suggests that the individuals who are driving better firm results just seem to be more competent at navigating the more analytical, technical, and complex environment that exists today. People who went to business school 20 or 30 years ago either need a refresher course or need to generate the intellectual capital required of today’s environment.

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Follow Kim on twitter @kimwhitler and read her columns at Forbes.com.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, Big Data analytics, IBM Smarter Planet, Indiana University, innovation, smarter marketing

Joyce Phillips, CEO Global Wealth and Group Managing Director, Marketing, Innovation and Digital, ANZ Banking Group

By Joyce Phillips

It used to be that next generation technology to make humans smarter, faster and at the top of their game was the stuff of cinema and science fiction.

Here at ANZ, we are exploring a groundbreaking solution that holds this very same promise – a cognitive assistant, if you will, that can empower our regional bank advisors to better serve our two million wealth management clients.

To understand why and what we’re doing to foster this innovation, it’s important to start with the perspective of the customer.

Imagine yourself entering a regional bank branch. You’ve arranged an appointment with the branch’s financial advisor, to discuss the life you want for you and your loved ones upon your retirement, and the solutions you need to achieve it.

Two of the key questions you and your advisor need to address are: what types of insurance, retirement and banking solutions do you have now, and do they cover you in a way that will safeguard your assets and yield a secure, well-funded retirement.

The fact is, many customers don’t know the answer to that question.  

We do our best to choose the vehicles that can grow assets, protect them and prepare us for retirement. But amidst market fluctuations, changing needs, and a host of new financial solutions and strategies being brought to market every day, it’s hard for customers to gauge whether their trajectory is safe and sound – and in turn, ask the right questions of our advisors.

But what if financial advisors had access to everything they need to know about a customer’s portfolio, with a click of a button – informed by an instant, 360 degree view of what’s right and what needs to be fixed, to usher that customer into the retirement they deserve?

This is where technology comes in; but not just any technology.  

The natural resource that can fuel a smarter, faster customer experience is Big Data, or the vast amount of electronically generated and stored information – ranging from account information to market research – that can piece together that 360 degree view for the financial advisor.

ANZ is collaborating with IBM to give our advisors that ability to harness information and make smarter, faster financial recommendations – enabling a customer experience that is simple, safe and steeped in data-informed insights.

The technology that will get us there: Watson, a cognitive computing system that is tailor-made for the customer experience, based on its ability to grasp the subtle context of questions posed in human language, search through a universe of Big Data to find the exact answers its users need, and deliver fast, evidence-based recommendations that can fuel a financial advisor’s advice to clients.

And that is how we’ll empower our advisors to be smarter and faster: by leveraging a groundbreaking innovation that can think like a human, and serve as a dedicated assistant, researcher and guidepost for ANZ’s top-flight team of advisors.

Technorati Tags: ANZ, Big Data, Big Data analytics, Financial Services, ibm watson, innovation, smarter analytics, smarter banking, Watson

Randall Beard, Global Head, Advertiser Solutions, Nielsen

By Randall Beard

It’s often said that marketers are drowning in data, but here at Nielsen, we have an idea for turning that harrowing experience into an insightful deep sea exploration.

For decades, Nielsen has been in the business of empowering brands and agencies with the information they need to understand and build connections with consumers.  We do this by measuring the advertising and media content people watch, the goods and services people buy – and very importantly, by spotting connections between the two. Why are these connections important? If you know what ads people are exposed to, and you know what those same people buy, you can get a lot smarter about how well your advertising is working and how to make it work better.

However, despite vast amount of data at their fingertips—and often because of the complexity of the data at hand—our clients’ ability to form these vital connections is oftentimes hindered. In fact, our advertiser clients tell us that despite the ever increasing amounts of data they have access to, they still have problems answering basic questions such as: How much should I spend on advertising? How should I allocate my spending across media platforms and within them? And, how do I measure my advertising performance “in-flight,” and make course corrections to improve results?

To help answer these questions, Nielsen created a simple “end-to-end” framework for measuring advertising and media effectiveness: the 3R’s. The 3R’s try to answer three simple questions: First, is my advertising reaching my intended audience (Reach)? Second, is it breaking through, being remembered and changing consumer opinion about my brand (Resonance)? And third, is it driving a behavioral reaction – e.g. sales (Reaction)?

We’ve been working hard to create the data sets and tools to help brand marketers answer these questions. We’ve gotten much better at answering the fundamental questions about advertising effectiveness, but we still have work to do.

Like never before, we and our clients face a continuous and, sometimes overwhelming stream of data generated by consumers and our digitally enabled measurement tools.  Just envision terabytes of structured and unstructured data pouring into our offices – trends, metrics, sentiments and perspectives – that express who consumers are, which programs and ads they’ve seen, how those ads perform by TV program, genre, web site, placement, number of times they’ve seen the ad, exposure to social media, where they’ve shopped, what they’ve bought, etc.

Within this data, there exists a range of opportunities to better understand consumers. But the challenge is clear, and for many, overwhelming – due to the data’s volume, scope and growing complexity, it’s almost too much to decipher.

A new form of technology is needed to dive deep into this sea of data, and come up for air with actionable advertising and media insights that can help brands understand their campaigns’ reach, resonance and reaction, and in turn, improve their advertising campaigns.

That’s why we were so intrigued when we began discussions with IBM about an entirely new and unique category of technology known as cognitive computing.

Cognitive computing systems can understand the nuances of human language, process questions akin to the way people think, and quickly cull through vast amounts of data for relevant, evidence-based answers to their human users’ needs. And very importantly, they learn from each interaction, to improve their performance and value to users over time.

Seems like a custom fit for the data-driven challenges today’s advertisers face.

Building on this excitement, we’re embarking on a new collaboration between the Nielsen Innovation Lab, which we founded in 2012 to advance research in advertising effectiveness, and IBM to harness the power of Watson, the sole player in this exciting new era of cognitive computing.

As part of our own brand’s continuous effort to advance understanding around advertising effectiveness, we’ll be exploring ways to use Watson for helping our agencies and their client brands engage more effectively with consumers across all devices – from TV to tablet to smartphone – while improving the impact of their advertising and media plans.

We believe this collaboration will open up a realm of possibilities for our clients, so they too can uncover value from new and exciting data. It’s time to stop drowning, and start exploring.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, Big Data analytics, cognitive computing, IBM Research, IBM Smarter Planet, ibm watson, innovation, Watson

Manoj Saxena, General Manager, IBM Watson Solutions

By Manoj Saxena

Social and technological shifts are driving rapid change, altering ways in which individuals interact with one another, learn, and attend to their personal and business needs. These shifts offer the potential to strengthen the relationships between companies and their customers—enabling more individual and directed communication and allowing organizations to cater to individual needs. Yet, for many, today’s online customer experiences lack personalization, timeliness and trust.

But what if companies could offer their customers the kind of personalized and knowledgeable assistance when they’re online or on the phone that people have come to expect from top-flight customer service delivered in person?

We believe that a new generation of cognitive systems will do just that. They will provide individuals with intelligent personal digital assistants that interact with them, answer their questions, and help them make complex purchasing decisions or solve problems they’re having with products like cell phones, computers and consumer electronics devices.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A first step in this journey happens this week, when IBM introduces the Watson Engagement Advisor. The technology underlying this service is based on IBM Watson, the computer that beat former grand-champions on the TV quiz show Jeopardy!. Our research and development staff has made Watson 75 percent smaller, 25 percent faster, and have been working hard to improve Watson’s ability to answer consumer-oriented questions.  For the first time, with the engagement advisor, we’re bringing Watson to the masses.

Consumers will be able to experience this new level of personalized service through the brands they already have relationships with—their banks and investment advisors, their phone service providers, insurance companies, favorite stores and other trusted organizations. For instance, a bank might offer Watson directly to customers on Web sites and mobile devices to help give them insights regarding retirement and various types of savings instruments like 401K accounts. An individual may begin a dialogue with Watson on their smartphone, but continue later from where they left off on their PC or tablet. Alternatively, a telecommunications firm could equip their call center agents with Watson to assist customers in troubleshooting a problem with a product, service, or billing issue.

(Check out images of the IBM Watson Client Engagement Advisor)

These amazing new capabilities are the next steps on the journey to the era of cognitive systems. We at IBM foresee a dramatic improvement coming in the way people interact with organizations and the role computers will play. The cognitive systems of the future will provide deep reservoirs of knowledge and sharp insights combined with an understanding of needs of the individuals they’re serving. The result will be transformational—helping people and organizations interact, learn, grow and make better decisions.

Since shortly after Watson’s debut on Jeopardy! two years ago, IBM has been improving the technology and finding new uses for it. Our early efforts focused on particular fields, such as health care, where cognitive capabilities can help physicians and patients make more personalized decisions about treatment and care. Now, with the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, we’re widening the scope that the technology addresses. It’s gratifying and exciting to see how rapidly this technology is developing. And, as far as I’m concerned, this is just the start. This next era of computing is going to touch all of our lives in positive ways we can’t yet imagine.

Technorati Tags: Big Data analytics, business analytics, cognitive systems, IBM Congnitive Computing, IBM Smarter Planet, innovation, Jeopardy, smarter analytics

Lori Steele, General Manager, IBM Global Business Process Services

By Lori Steele 

This week, C-suite attendees representing all aspects of technology-fueled commerce will be convening at the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Nashville. Among the participants will be L’Oréal USA, with whom IBM is working on a three-year project for procurement services supported by an advanced cloud analytics solution to help transform the way L’Oréal USA buys from its large network of North American suppliers.

Over the years, L’Oréal USA has rapidly grown through both acquisitions and organically through its existing brands. With the new market advancement, the company’s ecosystem of suppliers and vendors has grown exponentially. In order to continue to realize more savings from procurement, L’Oréal USA needed its procurement workforce compliant with its spending processes to attain the best buying advantage.

L’Oréal is the first client to purchase IBM global procurement business process and technology services that include a new compliance analytics tool from IBM Research, integrated with strong spending analytics capabilities from the IBM SmartCloud procurement management software. The new smarter commerce solutions will enable L’Oréal USA to bring beauty products to consumers more quickly and efficiently.

The payoff to sourcing critical business processes like procurement is innovation. According to the new IBM Center for Applied Insights study, “Why partnering strategies matter,” which involves more than 1,300 business and IT sourcing decision makers worldwide, organizations like L’Oréal USA that source broadly to drive innovation, are outperforming on a host of financial measures, including revenue (2x) and gross profit (5x) growth.

In other words, the formula for success is based on metrics that are tied to business outcomes, transformational scope and integrated governance.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, Big Data analytics, IBM SmartCloud, IBM Smarter Commerce, IBM Smarter Commerce Summit, IBM Smarter Planet, IBM Smarter Supply Chain, innovation, supply chain