‘For every $1 customers spent, they got $14’

IBM Commerce, an analytics-driven solution, helps clients understand customer behaviour and use these insights to deliver personalised experiences. Recently, Deepak Advani, General Manager, IBM Commerce, explained how the product is different from the competition. Edited excerpts from a media interaction in San Diego:

How did IBM Commerce evolve?

The operating unit was formed in January. But we started building the capabilities years ago. Investments of more than $3 billion have been made by IBM in the commerce space. We also have the capability to tap assets across IBM. For instance, analytics in which IBM has invested over $20 billion.

Internally, we think of it as two categories of solutions within IBM Commerce — customer engagement solutions and partner engagement solutions. Customer engagement solutions focus on reaching and understanding customers, driving e-commerce and merchandising. Partner engagement solutions focus on integration with suppliers and business partners. Nine out of 10 top retailers in the US are Commerce customers, while seven out of 10 banks use some part of the IBM Commerce portfolio.

Who are your competitors?

For different buyers, there are different competitors. In marketing, there are the more established players and new entrants; Adobe is a big competitor. When you look at Commerce, it’s Oracle and SAP. In procurement, again SAP is a competitor. In customer analytics, Google is a competitor along with Adobe.

But what differentiates IBM is that no one has got our breadth of capabilities. IBM Commerce doesn’t just stop at marketing or e-commerce or fulfilment or merchandising. We got payments, procurement, B2B integration.

The second big differentiator is analytics. When you look at our portfolio — the Watson capability, predictive analytics, optimisation algorithms, customer experience analytics — no vendor has the range that IBM has.

How do you fare against rivals on costs?

Clients have different needs. Some people in the mid-market want to do simple, email digital marketing.

Some people want to do something advanced, so that may need a bigger investment. Businesses are very outcome oriented. They want to see a return on investment (RoI). We hired a third party analyst to look at the RoI, and the study found that for every $1 customers spent on IBM Commerce, they got $14 in return.

Is IBM Commerce entirely on the cloud?

You can get the solutions on the cloud. Some don’t want to put their data on the cloud, particularly banks. So, we also have on-premise solutions.

How big is India?

We’re putting a lot of emphasis on India and China where the opportunity is exploding. We’ve got a direct sales team. We’ve also got a large business partner channel.

The one advantage in India is that we have large labs in Bangalore and Pune. They engage with clients quite a bit. Some of the clients in India and China are going more aggressively towards mobile.

By partnering with them, we are coming out with innovations that we are rolling out across the world.

Who are your big clients?

Gati is one. Customers wanted Gati to offer the cash-on-delivery option. The company used IBM Commerce Delivery as its backend capability.

The writer was in San Diego at the invitation of IBM

COMMENT NOW