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: Business Information or Data Delivery Solution
 Nomination Title: IBM's Insight Assistant
- 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:
Insight Assistant (R1.0) released in August 2024
- 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 259 words used.
While the hype around AI and foundational models continues to grow, many organizations need help deploying AI tools across real-world environments, with only 54% moving from pilot to production ( Gartner 2022 AI Survey , Gartner, 2022). At IBM, Consulting and Technology leaders require data-driven insights to stay informed and make strategic decisions for IBM’s success. The Sales Insight Assistant is an intelligent, conversational Assistant built for IBM’s employees and leadership, provides trusted data-driven insights linking multiple data sources across the enterprise. This “talk-to-my-data” assistant takes in a user’s question in natural language, understands the question, generates the appropriate SQL query to answer that question across different IBM data sources and warehouses, and provides streamlined and summarized insights in the form of a clean report for the end user. With the power of watsonx (text2SQL, LLMs, GenAI), this chatbot enables IBM’s employees and leaders to engage with their data and receive data-driven insights in seconds instead of hours.
With Insight Assistant, everything is now at the fingertips of its users, without needing manually built reports. With the power of GenAI, it can interpret natural language text and convert to subsequent complex queries for fetching insights or building visualizations (e.g., bar chart, line chart, etc.) within the chat application without needing any technical expertise. Use cases include:
- Lead Prioritization
- Forecasting revenue, budget, profit and other sales metrics
- Sales win probability prediction
- Pipeline and resource management
- Periodic updates and growth (e.g. Week to Week change, quarterly insights, etc.)
- Customer Insights and Churn Prediction
- Sales calculations (e.g., win rates, gap-to-target, etc.)
- 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 270 words used.
With the inception of Insight Assistant in August 2024, there was a tremendous response to this solution, with users expressing high level of satisfaction (NPS>20).
The benefits include:
BUSINESS CASE: Insight Assistant leverages the power of IBM watsonx AI to deliver savings and productivity. Leveraging cutting-edge GenAI modeling techniques, this intelligent assistant enables IBMers to “talk-to-their-data” and receive data-driven insights in seconds. Since its deployment this year we have valued a business benefit saving of approximately $10M and 7,500 hours across multiple Sales and Sales Operations Support teams. These time savings and productivity gains are projected to save 150,000 hours annually, freeing up our Consulting & Sales teams to effectively use that time to drive $300M in additional value for IBM over the next 5 years.
UNIQUE: Insight Assistant is incredibly unique compared to other Sales Innovation tools in that it uses a combination of natural language understanding (NLU), Generative AI for text2SQL conversion, and visualization generation to deliver meaningful data-driven insights in seconds, answering questions like “What are the fastest growing markets in Americas by revenue split by product offering?” which is unique in the industry. It also provides an ability to fine tune the LLM it uses, which you can then tailor for a specific industries and sales organization to understand the nuances and technical jargon used by users.
SCALABILITY: Insights Assistant architecture is scalable to ingest new data, as and when needed, train the LLM to learn the data nuances and leverage the AI based text2SQL engine to produce insights. Detailed process methodology on architecture and scalability is shared in the Supporting Materials section.
- 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 350 words):
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