The story behind the story. In Bolzano, Italy, social services uses IBM technology to keep the elderly living independently. Producers of a short documentary explain their approach to filming.
Via Ogilvy’s Short Film Shows IBM’s Technology in Action | Adweek
A large European telecommunications company used Skype, Facebook, Twitter, among others, to communicate with existing and prospective customers on presenting products, closing sales and answering customers’ questions. In most cases, the social media-enabled workforce was able to accomplish more sales- and customer-relations-related tasks and did so more quickly, researchers said.
60,000 pages of architectural drawings for Dallas-Fort Worth airport are put on cloud, saving over $1.2M in paper costs alone, as well as reducing contractor mistakes and making site planning more collaborative.
(via Huge construction firm uses iPads and Apple TV to save millions | CITEworld)
“Givers motivate themselves to avoid complacency by focusing on the benefits to others if they succeed and worrying about disappointing them if they fail.”
How to stand out from the crowd, capture attention, and forge a relationship. A city bus driver in Brisbane promised — and delivered — a happy, safe trip by engaging his riders with a surprising announcement.
… brought to you by IBM Services and Research
CTO Telecom Research Paul Bloom
GBS Digital Front Office Leader Peter Korsten
March 14. Last week, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty announced the company’s vision for what will differentiate enterprises from their competitors in the new “Era of Smart.” One of the major shifts she described is that in order to create value, organizations need to serve their customers not as a mass audience, but as individuals with personalized needs.
As the proliferation of mobile and social technologies continue to change the way we create, consume and share information, CEOs, CMOs and heads of sales are recognizing the data generated from these same applications can help them transform their organizations and interactions with their customers.
To address these opportunities, IBM Research and IBM Global Business Services have opened the IBM Customer Experience Lab that brings together the brightest and best minds from both organizations to help our clients capitalize on the proliferation of „, Continued on page 2
Charaka Kithulegoda discusses new social technology and social programs at ING DIRECT Canada:
Social banking has also helped us encourage our customer to save, through a program called Small Sacrifices. In a recent survey, we found that 52 percent of Canadians said that if they were able to better visualize what foregoing their daily, weekly and monthly spending on non-essential purchases looked like, they would save them over the short and long term, they would change their spending habits.
With client preferences at the heart of our business, we helped our customers visualize how cutting out everyday indulgences, — i.e. Small Sacrifices — could lead to big savings over the long term. It’s simple, but very effective. First, users choose what small sacrifice they can make, like passing on a daily coffee purchase. Then users decide which goal to redirect the money to, like their retirement fund or savings account.
Once the user specifies how much money they spend on their average, Small Sacrifices creates a chart illustrating how much could be amassed in five- and 25 years by saving that amount weekly. The next time a user is tempted to spend on their non-essential purchase, they can choose to instead redirect that money to a savings or retirement account with one simple click
Dr. Rudra Sil, professor of political science and co-director of the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business at the University of Pennsylvania, citing Arab Spring as an example, argued that social media distorts our perceptions of international issues. Speaking at The College of William and Mary he warned against oversimplification:
Unemployment had been rising for five years. And yet, when you hear the social media story, that part seems to be kind of forgotten. It all becomes about the corrupt dictator and the people finally finding a voice to overthrow him. Simplified version of the events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain did not provide a full picture of what occurred.
Similarly, social media diffusion of the woman raped and beaten to death in New Delhi made the tragedy seem like an exclusively Indian problem, said Sil.
It’s good that social media spotlighted this issue for Indians … but if we really care about rape and stopping violence against women, it’s got to be done on a global scale. Here, social media essentially was pushing us in a different direction.
Instead of rushing to judgment, he emphasized, we need to maintain our tradition of seeking out differing perspectives.
Boyd defines collaborative as top-down compared to more networked and social co-operative work environment.
(via Stowe Boyd, Social is the new production line, not the new water cooler — GigaOM Pro)
New IBM Customer Experience Lab focuses on CEO priorities
Yesterday IBM announced the creation of the IBM Customer Experience Lab, an exclusive Research and GBS capability aimed at the front-office agenda of clients in the world of Big Data. One hundred Research scientists worldwide will work with thousands of GBS business consultants to address the emerging C-Suite Front Office Digitization priorities.
Banorte-lxe, one of the leading banks in Latin America, and Nationwide, the world’s largest building society, are among clients already engaged with the Research and consulting experts of the new lab. During its start-up phase, the Lab will focus on six priority industries — Banking, Insurance, Retail, Consumer Products, Telco and Energy & Utilities — and we are going to select and manage the engagements coming into the Lab through GBS Global Industry Leaders and partners.
