IBM Summit Focuses on ‘Human-Centric’ Thinking
Using data to connect with customers in a digital world was one of the underlying themes of IBM’s annual Smarter Commerce Global Summit last week, where marketers got a look at the new IBM ExperienceOne integrated portfolio of marketing, sales and service solutions.
Over 4,000 attendees went to the summit in Tampa, where IBM execs and 
keynote speakers focused on the importance of mobile and catering to the shorter attention spans of today’s connected consumers. The “Moments Matter” tagline for the event illustrated how marketers need to focus on the customer experience and make the most out of every customer interaction.
“In the digital economy, we win or lose clients with a click or a swipe. How we engage has never been more important. Moments matter and businesses that succeed will need to reinvent themselves digitally, and data and analytics are the basis of that reinvention,” says IBM senior vice president, software and cloud solutions group Robert LeBlanc.
The message attendees took away from the Summit’s big kickoff keynote was that leaders should go beyond customer-centric thinking and toward human-centric thinking, because messages that target people on a personal level are more likely to resonate. Marketers should move beyond channel-centric thinking and embrace experiences shaped by data that will target groups more specifically with relevant messages. And leaders should move beyond thinking about digital and work toward bringing digital and physical experiences together.
“Customers are now driving business model innovation. Experience is the new North Star, and it guides everything we do today,” says Paul Papas, global leader, IBM Interactive Experience.
At the event, IBM debuted ExperienceOne, a new integrated portfolio of cloud-based and on-premise offerings aimed at quickly delivering deeper, more valuable customer engagements by bringing together marketing, sales and service practices.
Built on IBM’s best practices learned through working with more than 8,000 organizations worldwide, IBM ExperienceOne delivers a set of predefined engagement solutions delivered with IBM consulting services and powered by its leading WebSphere Commerce, Customer Digital Experience and Enterprise Marketing Management software.
“Smarter commerce is about helping clients continuously reinvent themselves around the customer experience,” said Craig Hayman, General Manager, Industry Cloud Solutions, IBM. “IBM ExperienceOne provides a secure and simplified portfolio – including innovation from more than 1,200 partners – to help clients design and deliver more valuable customer engagements. With cloud, on premise and hybrid options, IBM ExperienceOne quickly scales to engage every customer in the moment while protecting their privacy.”
IBM ExperienceOne brings new and enhanced software capabilities to the table, which are designed to support three new engagement solution sets:
Understand Your Customers: At the heart of this solution set is IBM’s newly integrated Digital, Behavioral, Social Media and Predictive Customer analytics offering to help clients identify real-time trends based on internal and external customer data. It features new mobile analytics that can replay individual user sessions on both Android and iOS device apps, enabling marketers and commerce professionals to pinpoint the exact moment when a customer decided to browse, buy or abandon a transaction.
Maximize Sales, Profit and Loyalty: This solution set helps clients quickly act on insights and maximize customer value using IBM’s enhanced omni-channel merchandising capabilities. It enables merchandising professionals to automate price optimization, maintain real-time transparency and competitive pricing across all physical and digital channels to deliver the right offer to the right customer at the right time.
Deliver Empowering Digital Experiences: As the gateway to each customer touch point, this solution set is supported by enhancements to IBM’s customer digital experience software. Marketing, sales and service professionals now can more easily leverage dynamic customer, pricing and performance analytics by embedding real-time offers into their mobile, social and rich media experiences. The real-time offer engine automates personalization across the customer experience at scale, increasing engagement, satisfaction and sales.
IBM also introduced three new cloud business solutions to give clients more flexibility in how they buy and deploy IBM ExperienceOne. These solutions combine consulting services, IBM ExperienceOne software and cloud infrastructure powered by SoftLayer, an IBM company. They include:
Customer Data as a Service: Enables clients to combine disparate customer data from internal and external sources to improve marketing performance and revenue growth.
Customer Analytics as a Service: Helps organizations quickly identify new customer trends, anticipate future behavior and suggest next best actions to deepen engagement.
Digital Commerce as a Service: Allows business leaders to deliver exceptional digital experiences and accelerate time to market for a range of customer engagement solutions from order capture through fulfillment.
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