C9 Releases Sales Advisor Powered by IBM Watson
C9, a provider of predictive sales and marketing applications, has released C9 Sales Advisor, which will be powered by IBM Watson.
Designed explicitly for the sales representative, Sales Advisor uses predictive analytics to propose solutions to impediments that are preventing deal closure, such as a failure to correctly engage the correct decision makers.
By combining C9's proprietary sales algorithms with Watson's cognitive computing capability, C9 Sales Advisor will transform structured and unstructured data from systems such as CRM, email, and the Web, into the intelligent answers reps need to advance deals. C9 Sales Advisor allows salespeople to ask spontaneous questions related to the sales process and then delivers relevant responses. To do so, it leverages natural language processing and predictive analysis to search a massive collection of more than 62 billion sales observations curated by C9, such as email threads, CRM text fields, and booking information.
"Salespeople are challenged every day to unlock insights from the volumes of available data that will ultimately determine their success or failure," said Stephen Gold, vice president of IBM's Watson Group, in a statement. "C9 Sales Advisor taps into IBM Watson's cognitive capabilities to analyze a sales opportunity, understand the challenges, and find the people, knowledge, and insights needed to help close the deal."
"Pretty pictures are one thing, recommendations based on fact is quite another. C9 Sales Advisor is truly revolutionary, turning the established order of CRM on its head by giving your rep what he or she needs to move forward with deals," said Michael Howard, CEO of C9, in a statement. "Working with IBM Watson's cognitive computing services, we can unlock the value of unstructured data to serve it up within the context of a salesperson's immediate challenges. That translates into better rep success with fewer resources."
C9 Sales Advisor will be generally available in early 2015.