IBM has expanded its predictive analytics products and services platform to address three new areas: fraud detection, financial operations and customer service.
IBM’s Smarter Analytics platform fits in with its Smarter Computing/Planet initiatives, launched in 2008 to put analytics at the heart of everyday life, to improve efficiency across various industries, from water and waste management to traffic in the world’s biggest cities.
The new analytics offerings are a combination of consulting services and software that will use Big Data as its backdrop. IBM says Big Data is creating new priorities for C-level decision makers, and analytics will play an important role in helping them keep on top of these issues.
"These new capabilities target the agendas of global business leaders operating in a world of accelerating complexity, unpredictability and massively available information," said Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president, IBM Global Business Services.
"By integrating analytics into business processes and converting new insights into action, IBM is helping organisations transform big data from a threat into an opportunity, one that will be their most valuable natural resource," she added.
To help with the three specific areas IBM is targeting, the new Smarter Analytics platform includes what the company calls Signature Solutions.
The first Signature Solution is called Anti-fraud, Waste & Abuse. With health care fraud costing $250m a year and tax fraud billions more, IBM says this product can help companies protect themselves against emerging fraud. It embeds algorithms directly into business processes, and aims to detect fraud in real-time.
The system can also suggest a potential remedy for each case, ranging from sending a letter requesting payment to launching a full investigation.
Next Best Action is the second Signature Solution, and this one aims to offer a single customer view. It can grab information on a customer from an organisations records and add to it information from social networks, logged customer service interactions and web click stream data.
The real-time analytics element will then suggest the "next best action" a business should take on behalf of that customer.
Finally there is CFO Performance Insight. IBM says this can enable organisations to collect and cross reference financial information against analyst reports, economic market data, financial reports, news stories, board notes and company balance sheets. Big Blue says this will give organisations better visibility and control over financial performance.
