IBM AI Portfolio
IBM Cognitive Systems,
subsidary of IBM POWER Systems.
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Branding, Packaging, Messaging, Product Positioning, Go to Market & Sales Strategy Design
Define
Problem Statement
Selling enterprise hardware can be a lot like dating. There’s relationship building, there are dates, there’s a lot of communication. People can ghost along the way, especially when the commitment at the end seems costly, daunting, and confusing. Typically the pickup lines are generic, and customers don’t get to understand just how perfect of a match IBM AI products and services can be for them.
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How can Power Systems server sellers create engaging and relevant experience for enterprise clients, building trust, driving value, and establish the brand that IBM is the AI solutions leader?
Six Universal Experiences
IBM products and services are framed by six universal experiences. Each experience offers opportunities to solve unmet needs and emotionally bond users to products.
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We exclusively focused on the discover, try, and buy experience to improve product positioning, branding, naming, and packaging.
Meet users where they are.
Show, don’t tell. Create a seamless transition from “try” to “buy.”
Research
Stakeholder Map
This complex design problem involved stakeholders in various roles and from different business units, working on different AI products across IBM.
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We used Mural, Trello and spreadsheets to track and keep record of stakeholder contact information, their roles, and participation in different phases of design.
85
Internal Stakeholders
43
Sales
33
Product Managers
13
Developers
10
Infrastructure Services
6
Client Services
5
Marketing
2
Data Scientists
2
Business Partners
(re-sellers)
11
Clients in contact as
Design Partners
We distributed screeners at a conference hosted by IBM. We gathered contact information of these clients and identified clients from different industry verticals with varied AI maturity. They were invited to be part of IBM Sponsor User program in order to be part of the design process through regular engagements.
Virtual Enterprise Design Thinking Workshops
Once we identified who to engage for our design research initiatives, we grouped them based their roles.
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With each persona, we conducted empathy mapping and journey mapping workshops to
Excerpt of Sean's empathy map
Pain points clustered & priortized
Pain points and opportunities were clusters into 19 themes in the as-is Discover, Try & Buy experience.
Problem Statement 1:
Sean, a server seller, can identify an AI Offering customer’s key decision makers and leaders, relevant use cases and the specific value IBM AI brings improving the accuracy of Sean’s initial sales pitch by 90%.
Problem Statement 2:
Oscar, of Offering management, can communicate a clear brand vision with a unified AI product story increasing internal and market perceptions of IBM as a Deep Learning and Open Source solution leader by 50%.
As-is Scenario
Encounters potential sales opportunity but let it slide due to low confidence and lack of resources
To-be Scenario
Quickly identify client AI maturity and respective needs to make successful sales. Develop perception that IBM is an AI leader.
Market Perceptions &
AI Sales Tool Survey
We conducted survey with stakeholders to evaluate the market perception on IBM AI, ML, and DL services and products.
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More specific to Sean, the server seller, we collected qualitative and quantitative data on tools and resources he uses, his level of confidence in understanding the end-to-end IBM AI offerings, individual products, its competitiveness in the market, and sales success rate.
Key Takeaways:
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Seismic is mostly uses sales enablement tool for understanding IBM’s end-to-end AI solutions, how it relates to each other, and how it compete with the competitors
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The current sale enablement tools are least effective in finding how IBM solutions compete with competitors
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There is a general lack of awareness on available sales tools
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Users encountered following pinpoints when using the sales tools:
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Too many tools
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Lack of awareness
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Inconsistent information
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Offerings are confusing
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Not easy to determine use case
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Prefer to talk to an expert instead
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Ideate
Ideation & Prioritization Workshops
For ideation workshops, we formed small groups of cross-disciplinary teams. Based on the prioritized pain points and opportunities of Sean, the Sales Team and Carol, the Client, each team brainstormed possible ideas and prioritized them based on importance and feasibility.
Prioritization grid from the product managers' perspective.
Storyboarding
Based on the selected ideas, I created the to-be storyboard to visually tell the story of how our solution can bring innovative change to Sean's sales experieince.
Prototype
Sales Enablement Tool
Our sales enablement tool solution has following core features:​
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Ecosystems map that visually maps relationships an timing of product contributions in the AI flow
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Function grid that links to relevant use cases
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AI solutions hub to discover sales and marketing use cases and experienced sellers.
This new tool integrates with Seismic, the most commonly used sales enablement tool.
The concept of the AI Solution Hub has been adapted from the incubator team who tackled the similar problem.
Test
Brand Evaluation
Based on the selected potential brand names, we held brand evaluation sessions with internal and external stakeholders to evaluate its perceived robustness and personality.
Based on the selected potential brand names, we held brand evaluation sessions with internal and external stakeholders to evaluate its perceived robustness and personality.
Solution Architect, IBM
The design team bring tremendous value and unique skills to the table that are short in other places, as well as within IBM.
Sales, IBM
Content coming soon
Product Marketing Team, IBM
Content coming soon
What our stakeholders are saying
Highlights
Applying Enterprise Design Thinking to business strategy
What is unique about this project is it the approach of applying design thinking to the end-to-end sales workflow, rather than to a particular product use case.
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Design thinking was used at the core of strategy development and organizational change to initiate a culture that’s focused on this way of solving problems. We used enterprise design thinking activities to bring key players and decision-makers from across the globe to one virtual room, creating a unique opportunity for empathizing with each other, challenging assumptions, collaborating across disciplines and aligning on priorities and business goals.
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Working on this project has altered my perspective on defining and identifying the user to design for. I learned that the user is not intuitively the person using the product. As IBM strives to better meet customer needs, improving the product flow or GUI is not the only approach. Addressing internal problems and creating better sales and client support experience for internal sales and technical support can ultimately contribute to better meet customer needs.
Co-designed with:
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Herman Colquhoun Jr., Design Lead
Renata Mann, Senior Researcher
Takeaways
What have I learned from this experience?
1
Working with remote team members and stakeholders taught me the tips and tricks in executing fully remote design thinking workshops using Mural.
2
Winning a place for design to participate in the problem space as well as getting stakeholders onboard to the design process.
What would I have done differently?
1
Test the user recruitment screener to ensure we are using the industry terminologies, not the IBM internal terminologies.
2
Rather than simply distributing the survey links, time block and book a meeting to complete the survey to maximize the number of responses.
3
Contacting, on-boarding, managing, and relationship building with enterprise clients
3
Plan for more time when running remote workshops