IBM Launches Major E-Business Initiative Emphasizing Business Intelligence; Worldwide Campaign Backed by $30 Million Marketing Push - Company Business and Marketing

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Sept 27, 1999

IBM launched a major e-business initiative Wednesday spearheaded by a $30 million integrated marketing campaign and backed by numerous product announcements from across the corporation.

The worldwide initiative, which establishes business intelligence (BI) as the next major wave of e-business, also includes: Y A new program that delivers complete relationship marketing solutions for small and medium businesses, starting at $60,000.

- New industry and consulting offerings that help companies manage relationships with customers, monitor business performance, and establish a foundation to run BI projects.

- New advanced software for analyzing and integrating customer, product, and services data.

- IBM's newly announced servers: The RS/6000 S80 Enterprise Server excels at processing the large amounts of data used for BI, and the S/390 Multiprise 3000 provides a BI solution capability for midrange companies.

- New financing options.

BI is the fastest growing segment of the enterprise IT sector; it's growing more than 50 percent a year on average and is expected to reach $113 billion by 2002, according to the BI/DW Research Program at Survey.com (formerly World Research Inc.).

The new global marketing campaign consists of strategic and brand print, TV, radio and Web site advertisements, a special BI Web site, direct mail, and business partner education, as well as new programs and services.

The campaign emphasizes IBM's expertise of working with customers to determine the best technology solution for a specific business problem. It features real-life BI examples from customers as diverse as L.L. Bean, Kiwi Brands, and the National Basketball Association.

"IBM's mantra these days is `Do what's right for the customer'," said Wayne Eckerson, an analyst for Patricia Seybold Group, in his recent report, IBM Leads the Pack: Big Blue Has Discovered a Winning Formula for Business Intelligence. "From a practical perspective, this means that IBM is working customer accounts from the outside in, preferably leading with professional services to assess customers' requirements before selling products." The Business Intelligence Market Growing... and Growing

"The fact that IBM has designated BI as the next wave of its high-profile e-business campaign means that it recognizes BI as a very lucrative and major market opportunity," said Ben Barnes, general manager, IBM Global Business Intelligence Solutions. "Customers want these sophisticated technologies to be integrated and optimized. This speeds implementation, lowers risk, guarantees high quality at lower coast, and provides quick return on investment."

"IBM's future in business intelligence looks promising," said Eckerson in his report. "Because IBM plays in so many diverse areas of business intelligence, it has the potential to easily create custom and packaged solutions that leverage its consulting experience, products, technologies, and partner relationships."

New from IBM

The new integrated IBM BI portfolio being unveiled Wednesday comprises many elements. All offerings will be available worldwide by the end of October.

BI Solution

- Fast Start - This new program delivers complete BI solutions for small and medium businesses, enabling them to build and manage relationships with customers while continuing to grow their enterprise. Priced from $60,000.

Services Offerings

- BI Services for Telecommunications Companies BI Services for Retailers

BI Services for Insurance Companies Three new industry-specific BI services offerings from IBM Global Services help companies create high-quality customized relationship marketing solutions based on IBM intellectual capital and methodologies. These new services join the existing portfolio of BI services introduced by Global Services in June.

- BI Services for Data Quality Improvement -- Helps identify and eliminate potential problems caused by poor data quality.

- BI Services for Balanced Scorecard Deployment -- A BI solution tailored to a specific business that captures and reports key measurements (i.e., revenue, profit, customer satisfaction), enabling senior management to see a snap-shot of the business on a regular basis.

Data Management - DB2 Intelligent Miner for Data V6.1 - DB2 Intelligent Miner for Data Version 6.1 brings IBM's core data-mining technology to a broader range of users, helping them uncover intelligence from large amounts of enterprise data, including information from transaction and e-commerce applications. A new feature makes it easier for business analysts to interpret information using visual techniques in addition to statistics.

- DB2 Intelligent Miner for Relationship Marketing Version 6.1 -- Delivers a suite of Web-enabled data-mining applications that focus on managing customer relationships.

- DB2 OLAP Server Version 1.1 -- An enterprisewide online analytical processing system that supports multidimensional reporting and analysis. It enables users to quickly build analytical applications using built-in math, financial and statistical functions. These users can now interact with business data quickly with conventional query languages and procedures, instead of using spreadsheets, Web browsers and other intuitive interfaces.