Six CRM Application Vendors Join IBM's Watson Ecosystem

IBM has added six new Watson Ecosystem partners to the growing list of companies that are developing apps and services powered by cognitive computing. The new partners, Engage, Macaw Speech, Opentopic, StatSocial, Vennli, and Domus Semo Sancus, are developing use cases in the areas of call center support, speech telephony, content marketing, social media analysis, survey analysis, and risk management.

These partners join a growing community of startups and established businesses that are leveraging the Watson Developer Cloud, a platform used by more than 77,000 developers globally to pilot, test, and deploy new business ideas. The community includes more than 350 Watson Ecosystem partners.

Engage, a providerr of contact center and call intelligence technology, has created SpeechIQ to provide small and midsized businesses with a cloud-based call center speech analytics solution. SpeechIQ leverages Watson's sentiment and speech analysis capabilities to analyze conversations and provide a comprehensive dashboard for chief compliance officers to mitigate risk for the call center agent and customer. Community Choice Financial is leveraging Engage's speech analytics platform for compliance monitoring, script adherence, and caller sentiment features.

Macaw Speech's Agent Assist application uses Watson's natural language Retrieve & Rank API to enable a content search and retrieval system that can ingest, index, and learn the meaning of the data sets regardless of format. This allows call center agents to identify relevant content faster to improve response times and resolution of customer inquiries. Abtran, an Irish provider of customer and business process management services, is testing the Agent Assist application powered by Watson for its agents.

Gust, an online funding platform, is using Opentopic's Cognitive Content Marketing solution, powered by the IBM Watson Taxonomy API, to get content recommendations based on entrepreneurial target audience profiles of their city hubs.

StatSocial, a social data company, is using the Watson Personality Insights API to analyze social and blog content to identify the personality types, values, and needs of hundreds of millions of consumers across the world. Evolve24 is leveraging StatSocial's Watson-powered social data and analytics solution to understand the personality and social characteristics of select population segments for personalized campaigns.

Vennli, a growth strategy software provider, is using Watson's sentiment analysis and concept tagging abilities to analyze survey responses and identify the key elements that impact customer buying decisions. When Sage Vertical Gardens expanded into a new consumer market, it used the Vennli solution powered by IBM Watson to pinpoint the attributes that drive customer choice in very specific market segments and create an executable strategy for growth.

Domus Semo Sancus, a financial technology company, has created a Know Your Customer compliance and risk management engine that draws on the largest global database to assess risk. SafetyNet powered by IBM Watson integrates multiple language APIs to help organizations quantify, with a high level of confidence, the risk that a person or entity of interest is engaging in illegal practices. The government of Turks & Caicos is currently using the solution to improve operations by vetting potential investors in minutes.

To help these organizations, IBM continues to expand its portfolio of Watson APIs and services available in the Watson Developer Cloud to accelerate the development of Watson-fueled businesses. IBM also draws on a $100 million venture fund intended to seed select start-ups and businesses to further advance their innovations.

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