IBM Announces Global Consulting Practice Fusing Strategy, Data and Design

ORLANDO, FL. - 28 Jan 2014: Connect Conference IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a global consulting practice that anticipates the emerging client demand for irresistible user experiences as the point of entry to high-value relationships with their customers, employees, prospects and partners.

The global consulting practice, IBM Interactive Experience, creates a next-generation services capability that integrates the leading design capabilities and user experience experts from IBM Interactive -- a top-rated digital agency -- with the innovation and data expertise of more than 100 IBM Researchers from the companys Customer Experience Lab.

The practice will help clients create the essential front-end, individual engagement, assimilate massive volumes of data -- including the information on individual decisions, choices, preferences and attitudes -- then convert that insight into high-value outcomes ranging from personalization to business model redesign.

Clients across industries are already engaging with IBM to create new models of individual engagement, including Australian retailer David Jones, leading Mexican bank Banorte, Peru's insurance company Rimac, and Jaguar Land Rover.

"Our goal as a retailer is to provide an exceptional customer experience by taking full advantage of data-driven insights and technology platforms across our business, said Paul Zahra, David Jones CEO & Managing Director. "David Jones selected IBMs Interactive Experience practice because we were seeking a partner that could effectively combine global industry experience, customer strategy, analytical insight and design capabilities which would enable us to transform our customer engagement.

Our clients understand that the experience any individual has with their brands, products, services or strategy is the new point of entry to sustainable business relationships," said Bridget van Kralingen, Senior Vice President of IBM Global Business Services, in a keynote speech today to leading technology and business executives. "That experience will generate the most valuable information any enterprise can ever possess -- information on individual preferences. So as our clients front-office agendas drive the next era of business transformation, were going to see traditional distinctions between strategy, analytic applications, and the design of the individual experience, disappear.

As part of today's announcement, IBM is releasing new data-driven capabilities for the C-suite including:

-- Life Event Detection -- Analyzes unstructured social media data to detect important events in customers' lives. For example, this technology can assess specific life events like a marriage and then make correlations to a range of financial decisions.

-- Behavioral Pricing -- An algorithm that combines behavioral models on consumer response to pricing, such as surprise and thrill of a deal, with historical transaction data to help retailers design personalized pricing strategies that help consumers make purchasing decisions and improve their experience.

-- Psycholinguistic Analytics An algorithm that combines the psychology of language with social media data to understand inherent personality traits of individuals and identify their preferences. This technology goes beyond generalizations and recognizes the individuals to identify how they prefer to receive and consume information and offers.

The practice will also drive new innovation across IBMs Smarter Commerce and Smarter Workforce initiatives, where offerings like the IBM Kenexa Talent Suite are transforming how business leaders gain new insights into the data created every day by their workforce.

"We intentionally created this practice inside the broader consulting capability of our newly formed Strategy and Analytics Service Line, because the definition of high-value in business services is evolving across a continuum of experience design, data, and business strategy," said Paul Papas, the newly appointed Managing Partner of the IBM Interactive Experience practice. "This level of integration anticipates that client agenda and creates the next-generation services organization -- the first true digital agency, consultancy, and systems integrator."

According to a forthcoming IBM study of in-person interviews with more than 500 CMOs, 94 percent of market leaders believe advanced analytics will play a significant role in helping them reach their goals. The study also reveals a significant increase in the number of CMOs who say their organizations are under-prepared to capitalize on the Big Data explosion -- 83 percent today compared to 71 percent three years ago. The new IBM Interactive Experience practice is aimed at exactly that kind of gap -- helping CMOs and other C-suite leaders make better of use of data to inform their design, customer interaction and business strategy.

About IBM Big Data & Analytics

Each day we generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of data from a variety of sources -- climate information, to posts on social media sites, and purchase transaction records to healthcare medical images. At IBM we believe that data is emerging as the worlds newest resource for competitive advantage, and analytics is the key to make sense of it. IBM is helping clients harness Big Data & Analytics to provide insights needed to make better decisions, create value, and deliver that value to customers and society. IBM has the worlds deepest and broadest portfolio of Big Data & Analytics technologies and solutions, spanning services, software, research and hardware. For more information about IBM Big Data & Analytics, visithttp://ibm.co/bigdataanalytics. Follow IBM Big Data & Analytics on Twitter @IBMbigdata and @IBMAnalytics.

For more information on IBM Interactive Experience, please visit www.ibm.com/gbs/interactive

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