IBM Pushes Commerce Plan

IBM IBM is seeking to bridge offline and online sales and the infrastructure attached to it, in conjunction with Unica, Sterling Commerce and Coremetrics, in hopes that it is as successful as analytics.

Along with doing this, IBM will target chief marketing officers, procurement chiefs and business executives, instead of the chief information officers that had been the targets of commerce messages in the past. It is estimated by the vice president for enterprise marketing at IBM that “two-thirds of the technology buying decisions in commerce are made by executives such as sales, marketing and procurement officers.”

To accommodate the consumer, who is now more educated about purchasing decisions than ever before, companies need to use better tools and implement faster feedback to keep up.

One of the main focuses on IBM's commerce plan is to include analytics software allowing companies to effectively monitor and organize sales efforts, marketing campaigns and social media. The commerce plan will also create applications to personalize the online promotions and shopping automatically sent to a customer's mobile device. Also, IBM will have a community effort to be used as a resource for the best practices.

IBM asserts that “by integrating parts ahead of time, targeting the consumer doesn't require an IT project.”