In this interview I spoke with IBM VP of commerce products Steven Mello about how Watson is proving the cognitive intelligence needed to understand their customers better.
Analytics is a significant piece of the retail tech stack and although a lot of innovation is taking place in the space IBM's Watson has a special stature in processing very large volumes of data so I was interested to see what is new. I met Steven Mello at shop.org 2016 to learn more about Watson. Steve is the VP of Strategy and Offering Management and the overall business leader for the Selling & Merchandising segment within the IBM Commerce unit so he has a unique and comprehensive understanding of both the technical and business aspects of their solutions.
At Shop.org IBM demonstrated new supply chain, merchandising and marketing solutions leveraging the power of IBM Watson to learn. Watson Analytics helps retailers predict and guide customer engagement at each step in a customer’s journey and in the end help them make the right decision every time.
The cognitive power of Watson helps analyze and act on high volumes of data at a speed that’s never been seen before, understand nuances of tone, sentiment and environmental conditions and ultimately engage customers on a human level that drives their long-term loyalty to the business.