IBM announced its continued innovation focus on Cloud, Big Data and Analytics, Mobile and Social aimed at helping businesses address heightened consumer expectations for seamless, connected experiences. IBM Labs in India showcased a range of innovations focused on improving user experience, as well as discovering and reaching new markets.
According to IBM IBV study titled customer activated enterprise, two-thirds of the organizations that outperform their peers, leaders are not just managing customer experiences but also reorienting their organizations, strategies and investments to cultivate contemporary relationships across all manner of customer interactions. Customers wield a considerable influence on Indian companies, even more so than on organizations across the rest of the world.
“Businesses in the region have been proactively building innovative business models around digital technologies, and they are using newly found digital capabilities to enhance consumer experiences,” said Sandesh Bhat, Vice President, India Software Labs, IBM India/South Asia. “Augmenting existing competencies across our labs around the new technologies is a result of this paradigm shift.”
Featuring methodologies and best practices from IBM’s customer engagements around the world, new innovations include:
IBM Analytics allows a bank to track its ATM network to help predict outages due to cash shortages or maintenance issues. Predictive analytics can help suggest cash refill and ATM maintenance strategy. Based on predictive model suggestion, it can point precise locations of ATMs, where action needs to happen. Deployed at one of the largest banks in India, the key features of the ATM Analytics include:
Based on IBM Big Data and Analytics, another innovation is targeted at suppliers of commodities such as wheat and rice. Wheat is grown in Punjab, for example, and its yield is heavily dependent on weather and the ideal temperature for its growth is 25-35 degrees centigrade. However, if the temperature increases to around 40 degrees centigrade, then the yield is going to drop. Also, it needs to be stored in granaries, which needs to be at temperature of around 24 degrees centigrade. The crop also has a limited shelf life of a week. So, gap between demand and supply will lead to increase or decrease in wheat prices. By using Big Data this difference in demand-supply can be managed.
Another new innovation is around the use of Internet of Things technology that can be used to help remotely monitor patients’ conditions, so physicians and doctors can analyse the patients’ health status and provide medical consultation anywhere, anytime. The tool can also make use of data from diagnostic sensors, which are connected to a wearable device. Via the cloud, data from the wearable device connects with an application running on Bluemix, which analyses relevant health information and then informs the attendant and the doctor of any problems. This instrumented solution could be especially useful in urgent medical situations by connecting emergency vehicles with a Bluemix-based centralized traffic control, transmitting positioning data and enabling traffic control to clear the traffic for the vehicle.
