IBM Launches E-Business Initiative
IBM launched a major e-business initiative 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:
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A new program that delivers complete relationship marketing solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses, starting at $60,000.
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New industry and consulting offerings that help companies manage relationships with customers, monitor business performance and establish a foundation to run BI projects.
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New advanced software for analyzing and integrating customer, product and services data.
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IBM's newly announced servers: The RS/6000 S80 Enterprise Server and the S/390 Multiprise 3000.
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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.).
Business intelligence is the gathering, management, and analysis of large amounts of raw data on a company's customers, products and services, and all the transactions in between. BI solutions combine server and storage hardware, database software, analysis tools and consulting services. Marketers, business executives, strategists, salespeople, financial analysts, and customer service managers across all industries prize the results of analyzed data, which reveals what products and services to sell, to whom, how, and when. This information helps companies boost speed to market, gain market share, pursue closer customer relationships, improve margins, and reduce costs.
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," declares 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."
More information on IBM’s BI portfolio can be found on the IBM Business Intelligence home page at www.ibm.com/solutions/businessintelligence.