Success in the engagement era requires excellence in collaboration and analytics — and not just any analytics, but a prescriptive form that leverages insight to drive business outcomes…There is a danger in treating Big Data as a separate and distinct entity, as opposed to a step towards the end state. Big data should be viewed as an integral part of the broader transformation journey – the era of engagement depends on it. Via Frank Diana’s blog
Jeff Schick, IBM vice president of social software, recently conducted a live demonstration of a version of IBM’s Connections software connected to the company’s Watson technology. Watson was the Jeopardy playing artificial intelligence system now being used in healthcare and other key verticals. In a social networking setting,
Watson is a plug in where community members—-in this case physicians and health care workers—-can ask questions. Watson dutifully served up answers. Applied to other industries the social Watson connection becomes clear. “Watson will be manning the discussion forums,” said Schick, who noted that Watson can become an effective corporate extension that dishes out intellectual property as well as service. Via ZDNet
Join IBM for a live interactive discussion about the challenges, limits and new frontiers of understanding customer behavior — sentiment analytics, trend spotting and digital footprints.
Date/Time: Thursday, May 3 from 12-1pm EST
Where:
www.livestream.com/newintelligence
Featured vPanelists:
Christopher Frank, VP Global MarketPlace Insights at American Express and Author of Drinking from the Fire Hose
Jennifer Lai, Manager of Intelligent Information Interaction, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Bill Lee, President of Customer Strategy Group and Executive Director of Summit on Customer Engagement
Mark Matiszik, IBM GBS Associate Partner, Retail eCommerce and Cross-Channel Retailing
Human, Not Tech, Define a PC-Free IBM | Marketer A-List: IBM | Advertising Age
IBM’s path to marketing success began strangely enough with a retreat from the very thing most consumers knew it for best — the personal computer. Since the 2004 decision to divest the business to China’s Lenovo and focus on business services and analytics, the IBM brand has never been stronger. In the annual Interbrand rankings, IBM has added 50% to its value, now nearly $70 billion since then. The brand has reached No. 2 with a bullet, passing
Microsoft in 2008 and rising faster than No. 1 Coca-Cola the past three years. Should IBM and Coke maintain their brand-value growth rates of the past year this year, IBM is poised to surpass Coke to become No. 1 by next year on the Interbrand chart. Much of that is based on how investors value IBM, which has seen its stock price soar 78% since 2004, despite a major financial crisis in 2008 that has left U.S. stocks as a whole well below their 2007 peak.
A big part of that financial success has been branding, said Jon Iwata, senior VP of IBM’s marketing, communications and citizenship organization, in a presentation to the Association of National Advertisers conference in October.
IBM’s “Smarter Planet” campaign focused on its role in solving the world’s problems. Its campaign pitting the Watson supercomputer and artificial-intelligence system against human contestants on “Jeopardy” and its Centennial campaign focused on 100 years of innovations have all played a role in IBM’s success.
By Chuck Densinger, chuck.densinger@us.ibm.com & Mason Thelen mason.thelen@us.ibm.com
Question: Which computer system can provide retailers with unprecedented insight into how to serve their customers better?
Answer: Watson.
It may sound like science fiction, but it is very real. Fresh off its victory on Jeopardy!, the IBM Watson system is quickly moving out of the world of games. The first application of the technology will be in healthcare, where Watson’s ability to analyze the meaning and context of human language and quickly process information to find precise answers will help physicians and nurses unlock important knowledge buried within huge volumes of information. It will offer answers they may not have considered to help validate their own ideas or hypotheses.
But merchants watching the “Jeopardy!” match have already started thinking about ways that Watson could address some of the most vexing problems in retailing today.
For example, the typical large retailer has many customers who regularly shop the store, website, mobile application or catalog. But still, the retailer doesn’t really know these customers or even have a basic understanding of their individual needs, tastes or what they might want to buy next. We’ve all had the experience of feeling like a stranger in a store where we spend a lot of money. This has consequences for everything from the store’s revenue to its brand.
Watson technology could be integrated into a retailer’s core systems, including databases, CRM, inventory and order management plus all customer interaction points. The system’s analytical capability could enable businesses to ask a virtually unlimited series of questions, instantaneously, about individual customers. Such as: “When should we next contact John Smith? What should this look and sound like? Through what mediums should he be contacted?” Watson could analyze all the data available in to the retailer on that customer — purchases (and returns), favorite brands, online habits (if he identifies himself), and the type of customer he is (for example, a loyal customer … or only shops sales … or prefers shopping the web rather than the store).
Chuck Densinger and Mason Thelen help lead the Advanced Customer Analytics practice in IBM’s Global Business Services unit. Densinger can be reached at chuck.densinger@us.ibm.com. Thelen can be reached at mason.thelen@us.ibm.com.
![Watson And The Future Of Marketing
Source: Mediapost
by Chuck Densinger and Mason Thelen
We all know that IBM’s Watson computer plays an awesome game of “Jeopardy.” But the technology behind Watson could soon help retailers increase both sales and customer satisfaction.
By competing against humans at the highest levels, IBM’s Watson is something completely new — a computing system that can analyze human language and answer complex questions extremely fast. On “Jeopardy,” Watson correctly responded to the kind of complex clues that the show is famous for. An example, from a “Jeopardy” category called “Dialing for Dialects”:
Host Alex Trebek: While Maltese borrows many words from Italian, it developed from a dialect of this Semitic language.
Watson: What is Arabic? [Correct]
Watson represents a tremendous breakthrough in the ability of computers to understand natural language — which humans use to capture and communicate knowledge — as opposed to specially designed or encoded language just for computers. It can evaluate the equivalent of hundreds of millions of pages of material — books, reports, articles and so on — in three seconds or less. It is not stymied by intricate wordplay.
This kind of amazing question-answering capability could help retailers solve one of their most difficult customer service problems, which we call the perpetual stranger dilemma. Today, the typical large retailer has many thousands of loyal customers who regularly patronize the store, Web site, mobile application or catalog, spending lots of money. But still, they’re strangers. By this we mean the retailer doesn’t really know these customers or even have a basic understanding of their individual needs, tastes or what they might want to buy next.
Chuck Densinger helps lead the Advanced Customer Analytics practice in IBM’s Global Business
Mason Thelen helps lead the Advanced Customer Analytics practice in IBM’s Global Business Services unit](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhwm1p8gpM1qb4yizo1_500.jpg)
Watson And The Future Of Marketing
Source: Mediapost
by Chuck Densinger and Mason Thelen
We all know that IBM’s Watson computer plays an awesome game of “Jeopardy.” But the technology behind Watson could soon help retailers increase both sales and customer satisfaction.
By competing against humans at the highest levels, IBM’s Watson is something completely new — a computing system that can analyze human language and answer complex questions extremely fast. On “Jeopardy,” Watson correctly responded to the kind of complex clues that the show is famous for. An example, from a “Jeopardy” category called “Dialing for Dialects”:
Host Alex Trebek: While Maltese borrows many words from Italian, it developed from a dialect of this Semitic language.
Watson: What is Arabic? [Correct]
Watson represents a tremendous breakthrough in the ability of computers to understand natural language — which humans use to capture and communicate knowledge — as opposed to specially designed or encoded language just for computers. It can evaluate the equivalent of hundreds of millions of pages of material — books, reports, articles and so on — in three seconds or less. It is not stymied by intricate wordplay.
This kind of amazing question-answering capability could help retailers solve one of their most difficult customer service problems, which we call the perpetual stranger dilemma. Today, the typical large retailer has many thousands of loyal customers who regularly patronize the store, Web site, mobile application or catalog, spending lots of money. But still, they’re strangers. By this we mean the retailer doesn’t really know these customers or even have a basic understanding of their individual needs, tastes or what they might want to buy next.
Chuck Densinger helps lead the Advanced Customer Analytics practice in IBM’s Global Business
Mason Thelen helps lead the Advanced Customer Analytics practice in IBM’s Global Business Services unit
IBM Watson: Final Jeopardy! and the Future of Watson (via ibm)
After defeating the two greatest Jeopardy! champions of all time, the technology behind Watson will now be applied to some of the world’s most enticing challenges. Watch a breakdown of the match from Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter and the IBM team members as they look toward the future.
YouTube - IBM and the Jeopardy Challenge
ibm.com/whatiswatson
Using advanced computing and emerging technology, IBM is building a natural language processing computer code-named Watson to compete in the game show Jeopardy.
