IBM Launches 'Interactive Experience' Consulting Practice

Clients are now 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 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," says van Kralingen. "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, we're going to see traditional distinctions between strategy, analytic applications, and the design of the individual experience, disappear."

As part of the announcement, IBM is releasing new data-driven capabilities for the C-level 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 IBM's 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, says Paul Papas, the new Managing Partner of the IBM Interactive Experience practice.

"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," Papas says. "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.