Although the significant developments in big data processing and mobile solutions are important, the synthesis between data processing and mobility is the most critical aspect of delivering value to companies and improved services to customers, says international technology giant IBM Middle East and Africa director Philippe Fanjere.

“Our capabilities in mobility and big data enable our customers to leverage mobility to access new business channels and new customers, improve their services for existing customers and engage in a more holistic and ubiquitous manner,” he enthuses.

Mobility is merely a tool in a company’s arsenal and enables more effective and efficient collaboration across business units and between employees, as well as deeper engagement with customers, notes Fanjere.

“The crux of the effective use of mobility and corporate data is how we use the analytics behind the data to serve customers better, give employees the information they want and provide the correct customer information to deploy the relevant support tools. These capabilities increase productivity and agility significantly, and improve customer engagement and reduce costs to the business,” he says.

Further, increased use of different devices and media of communication, specifically social media, can also be analysed. Inter- actions with partners, customers and employees can be governed from a single platform to enable a company to respond more quickly, leading to more effective engagement.

“Social media interactions are about understanding the medium and the audience. On the social media circuit, you want to capture the core sentiment and respond appropriately to the community in that specific social context,” he explains.

Mobility is not a new phenomenon, states Fanjere. However, the functionality that can be provided by analysing data and distributing information across all platforms, where all users can access relevant infor- mation, is critical to enable the capabilities that provide improved productivity and customer engagement.

IBM provides relevant information to users by processing data according to location, conducting analyses based on historical datasets and performing diagnoses to determine the relevance of other data for the user.

Information is then sent to a specialist cloud that is accessed only by a specific group of users. This reduces the amount of information stored to ensure relevance, while ensuring that vast datasets are analysed to provide holistic use of all data stored.

“Only relevant information needs to be sent to users, but the systems must consider a large scope of different data to provide the specific information that different users need,” explains Fanjere.

The integration of the different information streams generated by data analysis requires robust experience, which IBM has, he avers.

“We provide the capabilities for customers to integrate and analyse all data sources, and then move into predictive tools, in which a real-time change in data will cause a real-time change in the information pre- sented to users.

“The goal of all these mobility, customer engagement and social media tools is to enable a company to treat each customer as an individual, and to have immediate access to information on how the customer’s prefers to interact with the company. Automatically personalising the information based on analytics of a company’s client data enables the company to deliver specific solutions and applications and, hence, improve customer service.”

IBM has the technology to deploy these systems and it can be used by public services to provide improved access to information, medi- cal services, education, transport, manufactur- ing and legal services, concludes Fanjere.