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. Continue Reading »
Jill Puleri, Vice President, Global Retail Leader, IBM
By Jill Puleri
These are crucial times for brick-and-mortar retailers as they evolve to put the consumer at the center of all that they do. Those that make good decisions are going to prosper; those who don’t are going to slip to the back.
Central to retailers’ ability to remain relevant is their response to the mobile opportunity. Mobile commerce is expected grow 115 percent over the next 12 months. Though the opportunity is clear, capitalizing on it is full of complexity as retailers integrate web sites and supply chains together with the numerous mobile devices that consumers are using to shop.
Just a few years ago, many retailers were working feverishly to push out shopping applications for mobile devices. There was good reason for the rush: tens of millions of consumers are jumping on the smart-phone band wagon and using them to shop. Continue Reading »
Michael Haydock, Chief Scientist, IBM Global Business Services, Retail Analytics Leader
By Michael Haydock
Jewelry sales are set to shine this year and expected to grow more than 11 percent in the second quarter and nine percent overall this year, according to a new Big Data-based retail forecast from IBM.
According to the analysis, improved consumer confidence, lower unemployment and enhanced stock dividends from the fourth quarter of 2012 have combined to leave people ready to start spending on luxury items again, like jewelry.
In addition, key retailers are buttressing the economic landscape and driving sales by leveraging Big Data analytics to better understand and respond to customers and trends. Sterling Jewelers, for example, which owns the popular Jared and Kay brands, overhauled its digital channels to better respond to changing consumer preferences. The move led to an increase in online sales of 49 percent this past holiday season. Continue Reading »
Ari Sheinkin, Vice President, Client Insights, IBM
By Ari Sheinkin
Imagine an office full of static and noise. You hear YouTube blaring over bad speakers, competing with a dozen mobile calls and an in-person conference that’s interrupted by constant knocking on the door. And in this mayhem, you’re listening for one voice: the one whisper from one client talking about their experience or preference or plan.
CMOs face their own daily mayhem of data as they try to engage with customers as individuals. Marketing to industry segments and broad demographics is being replaced by the “era of you.”
Much of the data deluge comes from consumers via searches, clickstreams, mobile phones, and comments on Facebook and Twitter. Combine that with data about in-store traffic, conversations with call centers, and updates from suppliers, and today’s marketers confront a blitz of data waiting to be analyzed and acted upon to boost business. Better insights enable companies, from retailers to banks, to literally design offers and services tailored to what consumers are telling them. Continue Reading »
By Joanna Brewer, Writer/Communications, IBM
Keith Mercier, Associate Partner, IBM Global Business Services, Retail Center of Competency
Growing up in a military family, Keith Mercier‘s fashion choices were limited to what was available at the military base exchange. At age 12, his love of fashion hit him like a bolt of lightning in the form of a bright red, v-neck, cashmere Lacoste sweater.
Dubbing himself the “fashionisto,” Mercier says, “In the fashion business you have to think like a fashionista – a truly devoted follower of fashion – if you are going to surprise and delight them and keep them coming back.” Continue Reading »
Erick Brethenoux, Director, Business Analytics and Decision Management Strategy, IBM Software Group
By Erick Brethenoux
CMOs would do well to heed Ernest Hemingway’s time-tested advice: “When people talk, listen completely.”
For some time, brand strategists have been underscoring the importance of listening as a strategic mainstay for brands seeking to delve into social media.
To this day, I believe that thoughtful, inquisitive listening – to public commentary like tweets, posts and the range of online data that we, as individuals, share as a way of expressing ourselves – is one of the smartest investments a marketer can make.
The sky is the limit in terms of the kind of data marketers can listen to today. From online reviews that consumers post and contributions to forums, to creative self-expression on Pintrest and, of course, succinct yet expressive tweets – all of these are Big Data insights that, together, form a true narrative of what makes customers tick. Continue Reading »
Ade Shannon, CEO, LabelSneak
By Ade Shannon
Interest in Big Data has reached new heights for many small companies as they attempt to capture information to glean insights from the ongoing conversations on social channels such as Facebook, twitter and consumer blogs.
Businesses large and small face the challenge of vying for consumers who look around and research extensively for the right deal before they buy. And when they do make a buying decision, they express their views and talk about it to everyone – instantly. They blog about it, they post reviews, they want to be heard, they want dialog. They also will loudly change brands and loyalties if crossed. In short, consumers are increasingly influencers, informed, expressive and networked shoppers who have evolved into “networks of intelligence” and a key voice for a brand. Continue Reading »
George Murray, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Sterling Jewelers Inc.
By George Murray
Today’s retail environment is witnessing the convergence of competition and innovation evidenced by the growing trend in “show-rooming.” Every company is looking for ways to make the consumer’s omni-channel shopping experience more convenient, and while the keys to achieving this are fairly universal the journey to integrating them in a relevant way is not.
At Sterling Jewelers, we launched ecommerce for our Kay® Jewelers and Jared® the Galleria of Jewelry brands as an additional means of meeting our customers’ evolving needs. Since the introduction of our online platform, we have worked to develop a true digital eco-system, which is focused on how a shopper experiences, interacts with and ultimately purchases our products. Continue Reading »
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Jeffrey Nichols, IBM Research Staff Member
By Richard Silberman, Writer/Researcher, IBM Communications
Jeffrey Nichols is putting a new twist on Twitter that could change the way businesses use social media to identify, engage and market to customers.
“What we actually see from Twitter is just the tip of the information iceberg,” said Nichols, who manages the social media and crowd research team at IBM Research in Almaden, Calif. “Below every tweet there’s a lot more information that people have that they’re not sharing.”
Determined to extract hidden information from social media, Nichols is developing strategies to ask questions directly of targeted strangers over Twitter. The crux of Nichols work is to move from the ubiquitous reactive approach to social media, where marketers follow and respond to what people are saying, to a proactive model where they can reach out to individuals to collect specific information. Continue Reading »
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Zoran Lemut, CIO, Kemofarmacija
By Zoran Lemut
Kemofarmacija is the leading wholesaler of healthcare products in Slovenia, offering customers more than 16,000 different products ranging from medicine and medical devices, to nutritional and cosmetic products. Though we have enjoyed the industry leadership position, we only recently began to fully exploit our online sales channel. It was an area that we knew required analysis and insight of our growing data volumes – our Big Data.
While more and more of our customers were looking to make their purchases online, our competitors were over taking us with more aggressive web-driven sales models. We were not maximizing opportunities for cross-selling or more targeted online marketing and on top of it all, our website was simply not easy to navigate. Our challenge was as simple as it was profound: update our online operation to meet the needs of the evolving market. Continue Reading »
