IBM has unveiled new service offerings designed to help businesses deal with rising and fast-changing customer demands within the digital marketplace.
It aims to address the needs of the emerging category of ‘smarter commerce’, helping companies to respond to market shifts in real-time.
The technology giant’s Smarter Commerce initiative draws on its market-leading WebSphere Commerce platform and a $2.5 billion investment in on-premise and cloud-based software from IBM’s acquisitions of Sterling Commerce, Unica and Coremetrics.
The consulting practice aims to offer a number of tools to help companies monitor their brands presence in real-time through social media channels, as well as automating their ability to design and deliver a personalised shopping experience, campaigns and promotions on new services and products online or through mobile devices.
Craig Hayman, general manager at IBM Industry Solutions, said, “It’s a buyer’s world now. Businesses require a tighter and highly responsive network of suppliers and partners to ensure they deliver the right product or service at the right price, time and place. The key to business success in this unfolding environment is predicting trends and automating market responses in advance to eliminate the gaps between buy and sell, supply and demand.”
Paul Papas, global smarter commerce practice leader at IBM Global Business Services, added, “If they are going to engage with customers that are more connected – but not necessarily more connected to the people making and selling products and services – businesses require a new set of capabilities that start with the ability to hear the global conversations taking place about their products and brands. This new level of insight has to be followed by an entirely different kind of engagement with these customers, including a tighter and highly responsive network of suppliers and partners.”
