IBM launched a new consulting practice area—Business Analytics and Optimization Services—that includes more than 4,000 consultants and 200 mathematicians and analytics experts, a significant investment for a new service line. The practice was launched in response to a growing market for a more sophisticated way to use information, extract insight and optimize business processes, according to Frank Kern, senior vice president of IBM Global Business Services.
As a basis for the new offering, Kern points to a recent IBM study that found that 80 percent of business leaders say they've made decision with incomplete or unreliable data, and 50 percent report that they don't have access to the information in their organization they need to do their job. "Business leaders can not be making decisions this way," he says. "We need to move to a new level of enterprise intelligence." Organizations are facing unprecedented scrutiny, pressures and ever-shrinking margins of error and leaders are looking for more certainty in their decision-making process, he says.
Fred Balboni, the former leader of IBM's retail industry consulting practice, will head the new practice. "There is a real crisis of confidence out there right now for leaders and business decisions can not be made on blind trust," Balboni says. "This will fundamentally change the consulting industry forever." Balboni says the fundamental shift is from an instinctive to a more fact-based decision-making model. "We're on the dawn of something very new in consulting and there's a massive opportunity and market for advanced research and optimization."
Balboni says the opportunities are in nearly every industry sector, but added that he sees the most immediate opportunities in banking, telecommunications, retail and public sector—areas that traditionally rely heavily on huge amounts of data.
The new Business Analytics and Optimization Services practice will address five core client areas, including strategy, business intelligence and performance management, advanced analytics, enterprise information management and content management.
The service line is IBM's first new offering since it was formed following the acquisition of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting in 2002. The new consulting practice area is IBM's seventh, joining Application Innovation Services, Customer Relationship Management, Financial Management, Human Capital Management, Strategy & Change and Supply Chain Management.
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