IBM has announced new software and the creation a new consulting practice dedicated to the emerging category of "Smarter Commerce," focused on helping companies adapt to rising customer demands in today's digitally transformed marketplace.
The new software and services offerings, supported by global sales and marketing resources, will address the spectrum of enterprise commerce activities - new ways to buy, sell and secure greater customer loyalty in the era of mobile and social networks. "It's a buyer's world now," says Craig Hayman, general manager of IBM Industry Solutions. "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."
IBM's Smarter Commerce initiatives are build around IBM's 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.
IBM will deliver new integrated software building on these extensive capabilities, new services, and an education initiative to arm an extensive ecosystem of partners, suppliers and customers with new skills to connect the entire Smarter Commerce ecosystem. This includes new cloud analytics software that enables companies to monitor their brands presence in real-time through social media channels to better assess the effectiveness of new services and product offerings, fine tune marketing campaigns and create sales initiatives in real-time.
IBM estimates the Smarter Commerce market opportunity at $70 billion, driven by demand from clients that must bring new levels of automation to marketing, customer engagement and sales, as well as core processes for production, fulfillment and service for much more immediate responses to changes in markets and buying trends.
An "IBM University" also has been launched to provide educational resources for sellers and partners to build the job skills required for the Smarter Commerce marketplace.
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