Today’s businesses, applications, social media, and online transactions generate more data than ever before. This data can be explored and analyzed to provide tremendous business value. IBM® Watson™ Explorer and IBM InfoSphere® Master Data Management (InfoSphere MDM) enable organizations to simultaneously explore and derive insights from enterprise data that was traditionally stored in "silos" in enterprise applications, different data repositories, and in different data formats. This IBM Redbooks® Solution Guide provides a quick overview of the 360-degree view of the enterprise data that Watson Explorer and InfoSphere Master Data Management can bring to you.

Today’s businesses, applications, social media, and online transactions generate more data than ever before. This data can be explored and analyzed to provide tremendous business value. IBM® Watson™ Explorer and IBM InfoSphere® Master Data Management (InfoSphere MDM) enable organizations to simultaneously explore and derive insights from enterprise data that was traditionally stored in "silos" in enterprise applications. This data can be in different data repositories and in different data formats.

Applications that are developed by using Watson Explorer and InfoSphere MDM identify data relationships across these silos. These solutions unlock the business value that is inherent in a unified, 360-degree view of the information that is related to business entities, such as application users, customers, and products.

Figure 1 shows how the MDM integration of data from multiple sources enhances the 360-degree information applications that you can create by using Watson Explorer.


Figure 1. Integration between Watson Explorer and InfoSphere MDM


Did you know?

Research indicates that today’s digital universe contains 2.7 zettabytes (2.7 x 1021 bytes) of data, and this data is expected to grow to 35 zettabytes by 2020. Massive volumes of complex data are being generated at a rapid pace. This phenomenon is known as "big data". Sources for this data include social media, digital pictures and videos, customer transactions, system location and log data, and cell phone GPS signals.


Business value

Imagine that you are a customer service representative and that your last caller of the day claims that another representative promised them a significant discount. You have no record of this customer or offer. Not wanting to risk losing the customer, you spend a significant amount of time searching through multiple systems, trying to find the missing link or information. This situation is not uncommon because of the vast amount of information that is available across different corporate sources and the variety of customer touch points.

Watson Explorer provides organizations with a combined, trusted 360-degree view of both structured and unstructured data from within and outside the enterprise.

Master data management (MDM) is a key component to enable a single, trusted understanding of products and customers. It provides the insights that are required to act appropriately.

IBM InfoSphere MDM supports a consistent understanding of master data entities and their relationships. This trusted view can be presented to Watson Explorer to ensure that accurate information is delivered to users. Watson Explorer can also leverage the master record to extract and include visibility from other data sources to create an even broader view of a customer or product. MDM might be unaware of these sources.


Solution overview

The enhanced 360-degree view solution that is delivered by Watson Explorer combines structured data from enterprise systems. These enterprise systems include customer relationship management, supply chain management, order tracking systems, and customer support databases. The data might also include unstructured content from sources such as email, file shares, and content management systems.

This solution creates a unified workspace for customer-facing professionals, marketers, and other decision makers that provide an enhanced 360-degree view of customers, products, and more. It delivers the data and analytics that these users need in context and tailored to their role and current activities.

Applications that are based on the Watson Explorer Application Builder can incorporate data from both inside and outside the enterprise, and analytics in context (Figure 2). The solution can combine all this data and content with analytics that are relevant to the current situation and user role while ensuring that it delivers only trusted data.


Figure 2. Applications incorporating data from various sources


Solution architecture

The solution architecture is composed of two main IBM products: