The Beauty of Data: Unleashed! IBM Watson Analytics Empowers Business for Insights in the Cloud

Lyubomira Mihaylova • @Lyubomira_M

Using Analytics to Stay Ahead? You’d better be. Any competitive edge is easily lost to agile and analytics-enabled competitors. You see this as a threat? It is an opportunity! IBM Watson Analytics offers a unique, as-a-service model; enabling any enterprise to make sense out of internal and external data sources in a timely fashion to drive business and environment-driven imperatives. We all know that the pace of data growth is rapid – once the tracking and storing aspects are addressed, then comes the processing, analysis, visualization and understanding of the information we have at our reach. All that is delivered by IBM Watson Analytics – for free or at a monthly subscription.

Agile Changes and the Hi-Tech Response Life is constantly changing and digital data makes the world change even faster. Take customers, for example, customer-centric strategies are becoming increasingly prevalent. Customers’ behavior is becoming more unexpected – how do you map and create seamless journeys for them and for the ones to come? A key component of designing an effective customer experience strategy is data collection to identify behavior patterns, then taking action to optimize the experience. It is impressive how much can be learned from what you already have – with the right tools and approaches. Watson Analytics can easily facilitate getting insights like ‘show me the customer lifetime value by income’ or ‘show me what are my most valuable customers in terms of purchase frequency, price value, etc.’ What it does is to scale and accelerate the decision-making process, to facilitate building faster emotional connection with customers, encouraging loyalty and retention. The response of the technology to the rapidly-reshaping business conditions and increasingly demanding customer needs must be reliable, fast and available for all those willing to thrive.

One-Stop Shop IBM Watson Analytics is a platform that uses structured data sources to deliver data discovery on demand: cloud-based, cognitive, self-service, and intelligent. It leverages the cognitive power of Watson technology with the aim to accelerate the daily analytical requirements of any business or professional. Watson Analytics excels in the following areas:

- Providing semantic recognition of concepts in the data - Identifying recommended starting points for analysis - Enabling interaction in natural language

All these capabilities are available to anyone, willing to make progress in and take advantage of the cognitive world. IBM goes beyond providing analytics – the power, the beauty of technology gets further unleashed via the cloud strategy of Cloud Data Services and the underlying IBM cloud platforms Bluemix and Softlayer. They encompass the entire IBM portfolio – network, storage, analytics, integration, security, mobile, IoT, etc. and deliver Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Software as a Service capabilities. With cloud and cognitive strategies, IBM is literally enabling the world to understand more, do more and achieve more!

Figure: Combining fields in Watson Analytics.

Boost for Business Let’s review some of the immediate and tangible benefits for enterprises - no matter the size or industry when using robust analytics on-demand. The business gets:

- Trusted data (prior processing, Watson Analytics suggests / advises for improvements in the data, its structure, etc.)

- Answers to pivotal business questions and enhanced decision-making process

- Confident actions taken upon verified insights All this is facilitated by an analytics service in the cloud. That way teams are granted unlimited possibilities to focus on engaging with clients in a meaningful, timely and informed way, aligning the corporate strategy with 360 customer view and focusing on approaches that drive loyalty and new/increased/repeated sales. Empowered through digital and reliable intelligence, companies can focus on creativity and personalization when it comes to new products and services.

The Steps Towards Cognitive

Watson Analytics, being part of the Watson family (domains like analysis of unstructured data, natural language processing, machine learning, hypothesis generation and evidence-based learning) will keep evolving. Normally reserved for large companies, IBM brings analytics closer to small and medium sized businesses and even individuals, willing to uncover more from data. The vast repositories of data are driving the digital strategies forward and reshaping the business landscape enhancing the opportunities for growth, innovation, reinvention and competitive advantages. The cognitive era we are living in will help us know more, understand more and take more timely actions towards better future.

ScaleFocus provides innovative technological services and develops software solutions for customers in Europe and North America. Our areas of technological knowledge and expertise include: • Big data management and cognitive analytics • Digital transformations and obsolete systems modernization • Enterprise solutions integration and management • Implementation of cloud strategies, infrastructure and applications • Quality control and automated testing

• www.scalefocus.com • www.linkedin.com/company/scalefocus •