Focus on: Information on demand As the volume of data generated by day-to-day business operations proliferates exponentially, smart companies are looking for ways not only to manage their vast reservoirs of information, but to derive useable business intelligence from it. IBM's advanced data mining and text analytics tools are designed to assist in discerning patterns and trends that can help companies gain a competitive advantage by anticipating market shifts in time to implement a responsive strategy.
While structured data stored in corporate databases can yield a wide range of valuable information, 80 percent of data generated by businesses resides in nonstandard formats such as e-mails, instant messages, customer feedback forms and other unstructured communications. IBM's On Demand Innovation Services (ODIS) – a partnership between IBM Research and Global Business Services (GBS) – offers businesses tools that can help centrally manage information stored across a variety of structured and unstructured sources, in real time. Using these tools, GBS consultants work with clients to extract value from their information and take advantage of insights hidden within it, such as customer information, supply chain patterns, customer service and public opinion.
By allowing real-time access to information and creating a single, trustworthy version of it, Information on demand (IOD) capabilities give clients a competitive differentiator, helping to enable agility and adaptability. In doing so, IOD may reduce risk, improve business operations, increase worker productivity and enhance customer care.
Unstructured information management architecture One of IBM's most powerful IOD assets is its unstructured information management architecture (UIMA), an open software framework that facilitates analysis of the vast collections of unstructured data in corporate databases and on the Web, including documents, images, comment and note fields, e-mail and rich media. GBS consultants use UIMA to help businesses find and analyze useful information to uncover risks, identify new opportunities and increase efficiency. UIMA is used by WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind Edition as the interface to incorporate various specialized "annotators" that support advanced linguistic analysis of text and help to interpret unstructured information in a specialized domain. Since its launch in December 2004, UIMA has been used by the Mayo Clinic to extract knowledge from its approximately 20 million clinical notes and by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations in its clinical trial information portal. In addition, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is using UIMA as part of their new human language technology research and development program.
Operational intelligence Using IBM's UIMA source code, one company has developed a text analytics solution that enables auto manufacturers to process unstructured information from warranty claims, maintenance records, repair requests and call center logs to receive an early warning on product problems. Another has developed a set of text analytics components to uncover hidden patterns and identify potential criminal or terrorist activity. The solution analyzes such data as field analyst reports, ship manifests and surveillance transcripts, along with external content, such as public records, watch lists, news articles, publications and financial transactions. This same approach can be used to analyze contact center logs and use that information to further automate some customer service functions and improve customer service levels.
Workforce productivity IBM's Workforce Productivity solutions are focused on mitigating information overload in today's work environments and helping workers access information that is reliable, current and relevant to help them make better business decisions. In one example, IBM's OmniFind Discovery Edition has been instrumental in helping IBM customer support personnel more efficiently serve customers by identifying the problem and helping provide answers derived from both structured and unstructured content. The software can also unify content from diverse information sources and applications, including problem reports, customer contact information, technology notes and product documentation, enabling human agents to quickly pinpoint relevant information and relay it to customers.
Risk and compliance IBM's IOD Risk and Compliance management solutions provide a foundation and process for collecting, managing and sharing data needed to help an enterprise calculate risk and meet the increasingly complex compliance requirements mandated by Basel II, the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accounting Act (HIPAA) and Sarbanes-Oxley. Bottom-up enterprise risk management, especially for operational risk, requires consolidating reliable data and information from disparate products and technology systems across business lines. Information is analyzed successively through rules engines, models and quantitative risk analytics.
IBM Research, GBS and Financial Services groups are working to develop a reusable risk-modeling approach to identify risks throughout an enterprise, along with quantification tools for operational risk assessment. The solution incorporates business insight methods, models and tools that, together with various operational risk classifications, assess and quantify operation risk and identify potential countermeasures to better manage risk. For example, an insurance company could use IBM's IOD Risk and Compliance management solution to analyze claims documentation, reports, policies, customer information and public records to identify patterns and trends in claims activities, along with hidden relationships, to reduce incidents of fraud and "leakage" caused by unnecessary payouts.
Meeting competitive challenges with Information on Demand As companies seek to differentiate themselves from global competitors, effective use of information can often provide the competitive edge they need to get ahead. IBM's IOD solution portfolios, which reflect the technical expertise of IBM Research and extensive client-based experience of GBS, provide an integrated approach toward leveraging information assets, involving skills, methodology, information and technology.
For more information on engaging IBM expertise in Information on Demand solutions to help improve your information management processes, contact ODIS today
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