IBM Smarter Commerce Brings Integrated Approach to B2B, B2C 
IBM aims to provide B2B and B2C retailers more agility and visibility with its Smarter Commerce initiative. Debuted at IBM Impact 2011, it brings an integrated lifecycle approach to ecommerce, to improve how firms connect with marketers, suppliers, partners, customers, web sites and even social networks.
IBM aims to provide B2B and B2C retailers more agility and visibility with its Smarter Commerce initiative. Debuted at IBM Impact 2011, it brings an integrated lifecycle approach to ecommerce, to improve how firms connect with marketers, suppliers, partners, customers, web sites and even social networks.
IBM’s Smarter Commerce looks to improve efficiencies of e-commerce, including avoiding inventory backlogs, failed product launches, wasted materials and even ineffective marketing campaigns, according to Craig Hayman, IBM's General Manager, Industry Solutions.
Smarter Commerce brings together many of IBM’s core technologies – including integration, analytics, cloud, social networking and commerce. The solution draws from the portfolio capabilities of WebSphere, Coremetrics, Sterling Commerce, Cognos and Unica.
“With Industry Solutions, IBM is working with our customers to define opportunities for a pre-packaged integrated solutions with a definite operations focus,” Hayman told IDN. “With Smarter Commerce, we’re seeing we can bring a lot of our core components together into an integrated solution that provides retailers more efficiencies and customers a better experience.”
To be successful, businesses must connect to customers where and how they prefer to buy, Hayman added. They also need to better manage their network of suppliers and trading partners to ensure they have the products at the right time and place to meet this new customer demand.
"Smarter Commerce can bring a lot of [IBM] components together into an integrated solution that provides retailers more efficiencies and customers a better experience."
Craig Hayman
GM, Industry Solutions
IBM
Under the Hood of IBM’s Smarter Commerce
IBM’s Smarter Commerce integrates these IBM core capabilities into an optimized industry-focused solution:
- Advanced Analytics. Integration between WebSphere Commerce and Coremetrics web analytics enables customers to gain faster insight from statistics, charts and dashboards to determine the effectiveness of their marketing programs, call center performance and cross-selling initiatives, making it easy to manage and enhance the customer experience.
- Cloud Computing. IBM’s new Coremetrics Lifecycle is a cloud-delivered product that helps IBM clients track key customer advancement milestones, allowing them to better target investments in marketing programs, content and products to improve results.
- Cross-Channel Commerce. Through the integration of Coremetrics Intelligent Offer and WebSphere Commerce, organizations gain immediate insight into online buying trends, while Sterling Configure, Price, Quote with embedded business intelligence by Cognos helps companies streamline the quote-to-cash process.
- Social Business. The integration of Coremetrics Social Analytics with WebSphere Commerce allows enterprises to measure the impact of social activity on their commerce website including social referrals and the usage of social features such as product reviews, enabling them to make better investment decisions in social programs.
- Supply Chain Planning & Execution, The integration of WebSphere Commerce and Sterling Order Management, enables businesses to better optimize inventory investments by providing enhanced visibility and intelligence around current inventory positions and sourcing options, resulting in improved fulfillment rates at a lower cost. IBM’s Smarter Commerce offerings are flexible and integrated solutions that include these core e-commerce components:
Business Benefits from Smart Commerce
Early customers of Smarter Commerce include CSX transportation, which has cut supply chain and partner onboarding from two days to 10 minutes; and First Tennessee Bank, which improved the success rate of marketing campaigns by more than 3%.
Hayman also expects Smart Commerce to optimize for these core B2B/B2C use cases:
- Integrating marketing across multiple channels. Advanced advertising capabilities allow customers to optimize search results and search engine marketing associated with a specific marketing tagline as well as enhance awareness of marketing campaigns through customized landing pages with specific online product promotions.
- Better supply chain, inventory intelligence. Improved supply chain and inventory management capabilities allow businesses to react to changing conditions by quickly offering discounts on excess inventory or shift inventory to areas where demand is high.
- Provide partners, customers a consistent and unified cross-channel experience. To IBM, this benefit not only means making sure a customer that buys a large item online, such as a TV, can easily pick up the item in store. It also lets the customer check order status from multiple channels, web phone or smart phone. Further, it promotes suggestive selling at the store, where the customer can be told which DVD works best with his TV, based on mining social networking and ratings sites.
IBM’s industry and strategy specialists will work with clients to develop a roadmap and prioritize recommendations to address customer satisfaction, cross-channel optimization and more.
