ARMONK, N.Y., Sept. 24, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE:
IBM) today introduced new Watson
solutions and services pre-trained for a variety of industries and
professions including agriculture, customer service, human
resources, supply chain, manufacturing, building management,
automotive, marketing, and advertising.
"As data flows continue to increase, people are overwhelmed by the
amount of information we have to act on every day, but luckily the
information explosion coincides with another key technological
advance: artificial intelligence," said David Kenny, Senior Vice President, IBM
Cognitive Solutions. "AI is the tool professionals need to take
advantage of the data that's now at our fingertips and tailoring
general AI for specific industries and professions is a critical
way to enable everyone to reach new potential in their daily
jobs."
Today's news follows IBM's announcement last week of a new
software service that gives businesses more transparency into AI
decisions, as well as research from IBM's Institute for Business
Value, which revealed that 82% of businesses are now considering AI
deployments.
AI to Table
Today, IBM is making available globally the Watson Decision
Platform for Agriculture. The platform gathers data from multiple
sources – such as weather, IoT enabled tractors and irrigators,
satellite imagery, and more – and provides a single, overarching,
predictive view of data as it relates to a farm in an easy-to-use
app.
For the individual grower, this means support for making more
informed decisions to help improve yield. For example, using
AI-enabled visual recognition capabilities, growers can identify
certain types and severity levels of pest and disease damage and
determine where to spray pesticides. Or a grower can forecast water
usage, thereby reducing waste and helping to save money.
This Fall marks the start of a new era on the 10,000 acres Roric
Paulman has under cultivation in Nebraska: using Watson, it's the first time he's using AI to
help improve the efficiency of his farm. Farming has always been a
data-intensive undertaking, but in recent years, the data sets have
exploded. Right now, Paulman's farm produces a terabyte of
information every month. The tractor tracks its own movements, the
irrigators record water flow second by second, and the sprayers
register their output. "Until now, nobody has tackled putting all
this information into one place," Paulman says. "I've been waiting
for something like this, and IBM is the right company, and trusted
company, to do it."
Customer service
In a study of 5,000 executives released by IBM last week, 77% of
top performing organizations said they see customer satisfaction as
a key value driver for AI. To give customer service agents
increased ability to respond quickly to customer questions and
complex inquiries, IBM is making available today Watson Discovery
for Salesforce. The solution gives customer service agents the
relevant information about a caller's request in real-time. No more
lengthy training needed: Watson
immediately presents the likely solution to a request, which can
make even junior agents as effective as seasoned pros. It's been
piloted at Deluxe Corporation, who saw improved response
times and increased client satisfaction. Now, it's being made
available to the world.
Human resources
The average hiring manager flips through hundreds of applicants a
day, spending approximately 6 seconds on each resume, which can
make it difficult to make well-considered decisions. IBM's new AI
functionality for HR analyzes the background of current top
performing employees from diverse backgrounds and uses that data to
help flag promising applicants. It provides an indicator of success
and can help address bias in hiring decisions. For companies that
face hiring litigation, it can also help provide a clearer
explanation of hiring rationale.
A recent IBM study of global Chief Human Resource Officers
found that 33% surveyed believe AI will revolutionize the way they
do business over the next few years. These leaders are realizing
that AI not only helps recruiters to attract the right talent, but
also to create a workplace culture that is highly personalized at
the employee level and highly collaborative across the
organization.
AI is already providing IBM clients an advantage in their
industries and has enabled companies like BuzzFeed and
H&R Block to refocus recruiters' time on attracting and
hiring the candidates who are most likely to succeed in a given
role, in an efficient and inclusive manner.
Marketing
Your marketing department could see a big uptick in productivity
thanks to AI. The new IBM Watson Assistant for Marketing feature,
embedded into the Watson Campaign Automation SaaS solution for
marketers, can help by converting the busy work of marketing into a
simple conversation with Watson.
Ingersoll Rand is using
it to understand marketing performance faster and build campaigns
that speak directly to individuals, cultivating great dialogues
that build loyalty and engagement.
And marketers are just getting started. A recent IBM study of
global CMOs found that 34% of CMOs surveyed are planning to
reinvent their customer experiences with AI. New services from IBM
help marketers fast track their integration onto marketing
platforms, so they can more easily create compelling, personalized
consumer experiences with AI.
Advertising
Subway used IBM's new WEATHERfx Footfall with
Watson to design ads based on
shifting weather patterns. Why advertise hot sandwiches when it's
100 degrees out? It's wasteful, but most ad engines aren't smart
enough yet. Watson is. During its
advertising campaign, Subway increased traffic by 31%, far
exceeding all other targeting methods. In addition, they saw a 53%
reduction in campaign waste, salvaging about 7.9M impressions that would have otherwise gone
to waste.
Manufacturing for Industrial Equipment
IBM is releasing specially-crafted Watson toolsets to help industrial
teams reduce product inspection resource requirements
significantly using visual and acoustic inspection capabilities. At
a time of intense global competition, manufacturers are facing a
variety of issues that impact productivity including workforce
attrition, skills-gaps and rising raw material costs – all
exacerbated by downstream defects and equipment downtime. By
combining the Internet of Thing (IoT) and AI, manufacturers can
stabilize production costs by pinpointing and predicting areas of
loss such as energy waste, equipment failures, and product quality
issues.
Buildings that Talk
Combining industrial IoT and AI, IBM IoT Buildings Insights can
decode the exabytes of data that commercial properties create so
that building managers can leverage that data to help reduce energy
costs and understand occupancy dynamics in buildings, allowing them
to understand and prepare for different occupancy patterns. It
enables property owners and building managers to leverage insights
from weather, historical performance, and data from other
third-party analytics to maximize real-estate investments.
AI for Vehicles
AI will also play a role on the front lines of product development.
Since 47% of projects fail due to inaccurate or poorly written
requirements (1), IBM is bringing the power of AI to the next
generation of our Requirements Management solution. Watson can now assess the quality of
requirements and provide guidance on how to improve their
quality.
Additionally, to help businesses in all industries drive
industrial size outcomes, IBM is introducing services to accelerate
companies' IoT transformations – from strategy, implementation, and
security to managed services and ongoing operations.
Supply Chain
Each department in a company is different. Look at the folks
responsible for the supply chain: they're dealing with data flows
coming in from all over the world. That's why a global technology
company is using a tailor-made version of Watson to keep an eye on five aspects of its
supply chain. Watson can
incorporate weather data, traffic reports, and regulatory reports
to provide a fuller picture of global supply issues. And, today,
IBM is making this technology available to the world with Watson
Supply Chain Insights.
About IBM and Artificial Intelligence
A world leader in
AI software, services, and technology for business, IBM has
deployed Watson AI solutions in thousands of engagements with
clients across 20 industries and 80 countries. IBM's Watson AI
solutions are widely used in industries, including by seven of the
10 largest automotive companies and 8 of the 10 largest oil and gas
companies.
Sources:
(1) Project Management Institute: PMI's Pulse
of the Profession: Requirements Management — A Core Competency for
Project and Program Success. August
2014.
https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/learning/thought-leadership/pulse/requirements-management.pdf
Media Contact(s):
Hanna
Smigala
IBM Media Relations
1-203-512-5497
Smigala@us.ibm.com
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