A new initiative called “Smarter Commerce” which is being taken by IBM will utilize all the company’s expertise in subjects such as business process and data analysis to better understand the needs and demands of consumers and thus help vendors be better equipped to cater to these demands by providing better target offers. The Vice President of IBM’s Enterprise Commerce Yuchun Lee describes “Smarter Commerce” as a change which was needed due to the current shift which has come about in the dynamics of commerce and it will now make the sales more customer-centric. The engagements of customers with businesses will now be much more relevant with the new changes, claims IBM, and the customers will now be placed on a much more central position in businesses while keeping the whole process in an elaborate mechanism.
Lee joined IBM after their acquisition of Unica, which was a company which analyzed marketing processes and was founded by him. He told media that the Smart Commerce initiative provided companies with ways of buying, selling and marketing their products by the integration of their operations and interacting through collaboration, community, analytics and process; all inside the context of an industry. This initiative was formed as a result of the need felt by companies to change the way they interacted with their customers.
Smarter Commerce uses a broad-based market approach which is a feature that IBM has painstakingly developed over the course of last 10 years. This was seen earlier in the likes of SOA, Linux and Smarter Planet which included the marketing of a large vision which was essentially made up of components provided by IBM itself such as business services, packaged software along with solutions and various partner and training programs. This is something that is being seen as a major new strategy by IBM to implement its strength in data analysis for defining market spaces.
