IBM harnesses data power

IBM South Africa has announced that it will build capabilities in new consulting services and software that will help organisations transform big data from a threat into an opportunity.

The new analytic offerings were announced during IBM’s Smarter Analytics Leadership Summit where more than 100 business leaders in New York and London gathered to discuss the emerging opportunities analytics and big data represents for organisations across industries and geographies.

‚These new capabilities are intended for businesses operating in a world of accelerating complexity, unpredictability and massively available information,‚ said Birgitta Oltersdorf, Partner for IBM Global Business Services. ‚By integrating analytics into business processes and converting new insights into action, IBM is helping organisations transform big data from a threat into an opportunity, one that will be their most valuable natural resource.‚

Enterprises across all industries are under increased pressure to extract new insights from the explosion of available data. To address this imperative, IBM has expanded its multi-billion dollar investment in business analytics to address three vital client issues ‚ fraud detection, financial operations and customer service ‚ and help organisations increase revenues.

Based on experiences drawn from more than 20,000 analytics engagements, the new Smarter Analytics Signature Solutions combine innovations developed by IBM Research with new predictive technologies from dozens of companies IBM has acquired.

With this move IBM will significantly broaden the group of clients ‚ specifically C-suite leaders ‚ who can adopt analytics, extending IBM’s leadership position in the strategic market for business analytics. IDC estimates enterprises will invest more than $120 billion by 2015 to capture the business impact of analytics, across hardware, software and services.

The new solutions can be delivered by IBM consultants, supported by industry-leading applications management services capabilities, and cloud offerings. Clients can access these capabilities through IBM’s big data technology platform that includes Hadoop, stream computing, data warehouse, and information integration and governance capabilities, along with visualisation and discovery, application development, systems management and industry accelerators. To date, the IBM big data platform has been adopted by more than 100 business partners, bringing a new class of analytics solutions to market and extending the reach of IBM analytics offerings for clients.

Clients can access IBM’s solutions through a global network of eight Analytics Solution Centers. Credit qualified clients can take advantage of financing for services solutions and zero percent loans for IBM software with IBM Global Financing

The IBM Smarter Analytics Signature Solutions include:

¬∑ IBM Smarter Analytics Signature Solution ‚ Anti-fraud, Waste & Abuse

IBM’s adaptive systems learn from the latest data, helping to protect against emerging fraud. The solution embeds advanced algorithms directly into business processes, providing government agencies and insurers with the ability to detect fraud in real time ‚ before funds are paid out. Using sophisticated analytics, the solution recommends the most effective remedy for each case, optimising an organisation’s finite resources. For example, the system might recommend that a simple letter requesting payment be sent to resolve one case, while recommending that a full investigation be opened in another case.

¬∑ IBM Smarter Analytics Signature Solution ‚ Next Best Action

IBM’s solution helps organisations gain a comprehensive view of a customer, derived from traditional enterprise data and customer sentiment gleaned from social networks, logged customer service interactions and web click stream data. Then, real-time analytics predicts customer behavior and preferences to inform decisions on the next best action on behalf of that customer. These capabilities bring together Marketing and Customer Service functions and have helped companies like Sprint, which is using IBM analytics to determine the most effective offers for existing and new customers.

¬∑ IBM Smarter Analytics Signature Solution ‚ CFO Performance Insight

IBM’s capabilities provide increased insight, visibility and control over financial performance with predictive capabilities applied to key metrics and data on past performance. The predictive analytics, combined with what-if analysis, and traditional business intelligence in an executive-style dashboard, guides users with root-cause analyses. Organisations can uncover relationships among performance metrics, anticipate performance gaps and assess alternatives with scenario planning.

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