IBM unveils industry-specific predictive analytics services

IBM has recently debuted 20 new behaviour-based predictive analytics solutions tailored to address 12 industries and use cases within those industries.

Marc Andrews, vice president, Industry Analytics Solutions, IBM, said, “We have seen companies trying to take advantage of new big data and analytics technologies for a while now to apply them to various different business use cases. They continue to struggle with how to get started. There’s a lack of skilled resources. They have to spend a lot of time customising and maintaining the solutions they build out.”

According to him, this is where IBM comes in. Big Blue is using the real-world data gained from its client engagements to create predictive analytics solutions that clients can use out of the box, with prebuilt dash boards and interactive applications. Clients can just inject the data and start leveraging the existing interfaces, he says, though they do have the ability to tweak or modify the solutions as needed.

“We’re getting down to a level of specificity to these individual use cases and business questions that I don’t think anyone has really gotten to before in delivering these types of solutions,” he adds.

For instance, one of the new solutions for oil and gas companies is aimed at helping them manage submersible pumps, with analytics to predict outages before they occur and optimise production. For automotive there is a solution for welding robots and another for painting robots. Other solutions will help telcos analyse how customers are using their phones, how long their calls are, what time of day they’re most likely to place calls and which cell towers they’re using. Other industries and solutions covered include retail, banking, wealth management, and media and entertainment.

Andrews says the new solutions include pre-built predictive analytic modeling patterns and interfaces for focused industry use cases, along with data preparation capabilities to manage unique data and streamline collection and prep of data.

The majority of the new offerings are already available or will be within the next two to three weeks (with the remainder rolling out by the end of summer), Andrews says. He notes that they have been built with IBM ExperienceOne, Big Blue’s integrated portfolio of cloud-based and on-premises offerings intended to help clients deliver more valuable customer engagements by bringing together marketing, sales and service practices. In addition, IBM Maximo Asset Management has been pre-integrated to provide enhanced capabilities around work management, job plans, work order tracking, service requests and reporting.