IBM launched its smarter commerce centre in Singapore

The group (NYSE: IBM) and the board (EDB) jointly announced the launch of the centre (SCCOC) at IBM Connect 2015 organised in Singpapore.
In support of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative, the SCCOC aims to drive innovative development of commerce products and solutions, and transform the way businesses in Singapore and Asia-Pacific engage with their customers.

By leveraging real-time analytics and connecting the silos of procurement, marketing, selling and fulfilment, commerce solutions focus on delivering personalised experiences to the customer.

The SCCOC is expected to be fully operational by the end of the year and will be based in the IBM Singapore Technology Park at Tampines.

Asia-Pacific is one of the world’s fastest-growing markets for e-commerce, which is forecasted to grow from $567.3 billion at a forecasted annual growth rate of 20 per cent between 2013 and 2018, owing to the large population base and high internet and mobile penetration rate in this part of the world.

“With the establishment of the centre of competency, IBM is well positioned to help clients improve process efficiency, create new market opportunities and accelerate the digitisation of businesses,” said EDB assistant managing director Thien Kwee Eng.

“The centre will also groom Singaporeans in software development and analytics to serve the fast growing Asia-Pacific region,” she said.

The SCCOC will bring together technology innovations from IBM’s Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, Social and Security portfolios to create secure, intuitive and elegantly designed solutions, and will focus on enabling new business processes that help companies provide integrated customer experiences across the commerce cycle, from the front office to the back office.

IBM will lead the development of Commerce Proof of Concepts across diverse industries, which will include selected functionalities of customer analytics, automated campaign management, omni-channel marketing, digital marketing optimisation, Watson engagement advisor, real time personalisation, distributed order management, and predictive analytics for supply chain and risk management.

Through the SCCOC, IBM and EDB will also team up with industry associations such as the Singapore infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) and the Marketing Institute of Singapore (MIS) to reach out to marketing professionals through events and seminars on how they can leverage technology to transform the way they work.

Industry leaders such as OCBC Bank and StarHub will also be brought onboard to help identify industry challenges that the SCCOC can aim to address with Commerce Proof of Concepts.

“We are excited to be partnering with EDB to bring our global experiences in Commerce to Singapore and the region. Through the centre of competency, we intend to bring an integrated lifecycle approach to ecommerce, to improve how businesses connect with their supply chain and customers through their websites and even social networks,” said IBM Singapore managing director Tim Greisinger.

“We will also be building critical capabilities and deepening skills to raise the competency of professionals in the industry and generate higher value for our clients in the region,” he added.

By end 2017, the SCCOC will employ over 30 research scientists and engineers to oversee the development of products and solutions. They will be involved in defining analytics guidelines and solutions, developing advanced algorithms, data mining for platforms, testing and evaluation of programmatic models, and deploying the plan models.