IBM chose Salesforce to replace legacy systems and get a unified view of customers. They deployed it to 3,500 users in four months, cut a three-month process down to three days, and plan to integrate it with IBM Watson for competitive advantage.
We chose Salesforce because it was a no-brainer. We looked at the Gartner reports. It was in a category in all of its own. No one even came close from the competition.
We needed to have a new platform that would allow us to retire and sunset some of the old technologies, but more importantly, provide a single source of a 360 view of the client.
I needed open APIs for Watson, and it had everything we needed. So that Watson can call to Salesforce seamlessly, easily, and very, very quickly.
Up to this point, we have 3,500 users deployed worldwide in 4 months. We'll have close to 7,000 deployed by the end of the year, reaching our total capacity in the next 18 months.
What used to take something 3 months on the legacy systems takes 3 days on Salesforce.
This is where we see that competitive advantage starting to formulate inside of IBM. And I really believe that's just going to continue to grow.
When you combine Salesforce with Watson, nobody can beat that combination.
