IBM Pre-Fab Analytics Targets Vertical Markets

IBM is retargeting retailers, banks, telecommunications carriers and the energy sector with a package of 20 “pre-built” predictive analytics capabilities tailored to specific industry requirements. The vertical analytics tools are based on more than 50,000 client engagements, the company said in announcing the targeted analytics tools.

IBM said Thursday (May 28) it worked with clients and “signature design partners” to develop the predictive analytics suite. Development partners included Adelaide Bank, Deliotte, Interactive Data Managed Solutions and Urban Outfitters.

Each tool includes pre-built predictive analytic modeling patterns and interfaces for specific industry use cases, IBM said, along with data management capabilities designed to streamline data collection and preparation for analysis. The goal is to share predictive analytics capabilities across organizations in order to speed decision making.

IBM’s predictive analytics dashboard for banks.

Analysts praised the approach as a way to speed decision making while minimizing analytics resources as data volumes soar. “Because vertical analytics solutions deliver 57 percent faster time to value and greater opportunities to increase value over time, this is good news for both existing and new IBM analytics customers,” concluded market watcher Nucleus Research Inc.

Alistair Rennie, general manager of IBM’s Analytics Solutions unit, noted in a statement that the quickest path to business insights “requires pre-built solutions that are tailored to address each industry’s unique challenges.” The goal, he added, is to “put powerful analytics in the hands of every business user,” not just data scientists.

IBM’s predictive analytics tools seek, for example, to combine client, market and product data with predictive analytics to help clients achieve “hyper personalization” of data. In a banking example, predictive analytics can be used to spot customers prone to overdrafts, a cost center for banks. Rather than charging a customer an overdraft fee that might result in a lost customer, a “behavior-based customer insight” tool allows the bank to instead pitch the customer on an online product such as overdraft protection.

In highlighting the benefits of pre-fab analytics tools, IBM emphasized “out-of-the-box integration” of its predictive tools with its ExperienceOne portfolio of cloud-based and on premise offerings unveiled last May. The pre-built analytics tools also integrates IBM’s Maximo Asset Management product used to manage physical assets on a common platform.

Nucleus Research said its expects most of the IBM pre-built predictive analytics tools to be available in the second quarter with other to follow later this year.

By providing “access to prebuilt capabilities and integrations, there is far less time spent on building custom code that requires additional (and less predictable) debugging, testing and quality assurance cycles,” the market analyst said on a research note on the IBM announcement. “Not only does this drive a speedier implementation, it also provides users with more predictable time to value.”

Nucleus Research added that emerging pre-built analytics capabilities also address the current shortage of data science skills across most organizations and industries. “Traditionally, analytics solutions have been designed for trained users who spend a large amount of their time in analytics applications. By focusing each solution on a vertical, IBM will provide several advantages to alleviate this problem,” the researcher noted.

Source: Nucleus Research

Hence, it said IBM’s approach could help speed access to relevant data by eliminating extraneous information while pulling together data relevant to each vertical market.

Other observers have noted IBM’s drive to push advanced predictive analytics deeper into enterprises. In April, Forrester Research ranked IBM among the market leaders along with SAS and SAP in developing capabilities for deploying predictive models either on premises or in the cloud.

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