IBM and the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa said that they are entering into a collaboration to create an international centre of excellence for business analytics at the University’s Telfer School.
To initiate the new Centre for Performance Management, IBM and the Telfer School said that they will invest more than $4.8m in cash and in-kind time of IBM research and development, software, services, consulting and support staff.
IBM will contribute hardware and software, while the Telfer School will establish a new $1m endowment fund as an institutional contribution to the new centre. Through the new centre, the business school and IBM will collaborate on new business analytics research, focused on performance management innovation that will help guide curriculum for students as they prepare for work in key industries.
This joint research will centre on two areas of business analytics – performance management and business intelligence capabilities that help organisations better integrate their global operations, and then take action for smarter management, better business decisions and improved performance, IBM said.
As part of the investment, IBM researchers will reside at the University of Ottawa and work side by side with the Telfer School of Management faculty in a collaborative lab environment that will include research initiatives for computing with business analytics as well as other research and academic projects.
IBM said that it has invested more than $10bn in the past four years in organic investments as well as 14 strategic acquisitions to build its business analytics capabilities. In the past 12 months, it has assembled 4000 analytics consultants and opened seven new analytics centres worldwide.
Greg Richards, professor of performance management at University of Ottawa, said: This new centre will allow us to collaborate across disciplines to drill into integrative processes and methods that dramatically improve organisational productivity. Focusing these research efforts on some of the wicked problems facing our planet will deliver long-term benefits to organisations and to the communities in which they operate.
