Company: IBM, Armonk, New York, NY
Company Description: IBM is the hybrid cloud and AI technology and services leading provider, focused on delivering client value through a combination of technology and business expertise. IBM solutions draw from an industry-leading portfolio of capabilities in software, consulting services and a deep incumbency in mission-critical systems, all bolstered by one of the world’s leading research organizations.
Nomination Category: New Product & Service Categories - Technology Solutions
Nomination Sub Category: Digital Employee Experience
 Nomination Title: IBM's AskIncentives
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes in length about the nominated new or new-version product or service, OR written answers to the questions for this category? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the nominated video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this first question: If this is a brand-new product, state the date on which it was released. If this is a new version of an existing product, state the date on which the update was released:
November, 2023
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this second question: Describe the features, functions, and benefits of the nominated product or service (up to 350 words):
Total 329 words used.
AskIncentives is a chatbot powered by IBMCloud Services. The purpose of this solution is to enhance the support for both IBM Sellers and Global Sales Incentives organization, while improving their productivity.
Based on various analyses and feedback from end-users, the AskIncentive development team prioritized three main areas for this chatbot - achievement, measurement, and clients. Sellers sell the products to their clients, and this is the basis of their achievement. Due to the complexity of the sales plan and particular sales promotions at the time, some sellers struggle to understand what products they are encouraged to sell, to which client segment/territory, and how their achievement is structured. Search features inside AskIncentives have been designed to provide immediate, short answers in a very intuitive way to make complex sales plan easy to understand. It provides immediate answer, usually few lines explaining all necessary details – for example type of revenue associated with a product (e.g. revenue, profit, signings) etc.
IBM offers a wide variety of products and services. The exact number of products may vary and is constantly evolving as IBM innovates and expands its offerings; at the same time, some products become obsolete and appear only in historical data. Product Search is the user's customized search that verifies if a particular product is within the scope of the user's sales plan.
Upon login to AskIncentives, the chatbot stores all necessary information about the user (e.g. type of sales plan), so when the user triggers Product Search, the only input needed is the value they are looking for (e.g. product key, component). If the seller wants to have a list of all products in his measurement, he can select additional option - product report. This report may contain several thousand rows and can be viewed and downloaded in xls format. For those who prefer a simpler overview, they can request the Measurement report, which is designed to be simpler and contain up to several hundred rows max.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this third question: Outline the market performance, critical reception, and customer satisfaction with the product or service to date. State monetary or unit sales figures to date, if possible, and how they compare to expectations or past performance. Provide links to laudatory product or service reviews. Include some customer testimonials, if applicable (up to 350 words):
Total 338 words used.
AskIncentives is personalized, the content and the welcome screen are customized for the user - depending on the user's role (e.g seller, sales manager, analyst). Since its introduction in November 2023, AskIncentives has become the primary source of information, and it is the first point of contact when Sales population is looking for support related to their incentives.
After successful launch of the initial features, high usage and positive feedback, the team adopted the same approach for two other user requested functionalities. Client Search works in a similar way, user logs in to AskIncentives, the feature checks if the client (defined by client name or client number or other characteristics) is in the scope of the seller's territory. In addition, there is already a pre-structured report with all clients for this seller (My clients report) in this feature.
The newest feature is Searching for deal - this feature checks if specific deal is flowing to seller's achievement in his last commission month. Part of this feature is an overview how is the logic of commission calculation for different type of commission (revenue, signings, profit etc). Sellers can better understand when the achievement is flowing for specific invoice, order number or specific client (depending on which level they select).
AskIncentives works as a translator to display the products information to sellers without spending hours to understand unreadable measurements and product hierarchy. The chatbot pulls all the necessary details from a variety of sources and databases, combines them, and presents them to the end-user, on top guiding its user through the process.
The chatbot reduces humans’ involvement by reducing the number of inquiries and their resolution times, while drasticaly improving its users experience. It saves minutes to hours for end-users depending on the complexity of their sales plan. For the year 2024 AskIncentives delivered more than $3Mln in productivity savings. The referenced features helped to decrease the number of relevant inquiries to the analysts by 40%, and their usage in AskIncentives increased by 3.2 times over the year.
- You have the option to answer this final question: Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
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