IBM perfecting process to connect experts with clients online
With a century of intellectual capital at its disposal, IBM is creating a digital system to bring it to people looking to make the world better.
This year, IBM is celebrating its 100th anniversary. The company is choosing to mark its centennial, says Ethan McCarty, IBM’s manager of digital and social strategy, in a way that is “very forward-looking as opposed to historical.”
That’s part of IBM’s identity, he says.
“Every brand has to pick who it’s going to appeal to,” McCarty says. “We want to appeal to the forward thinker.”
Within the last year or so, IBM has come to the conclusion that the way it can best put forth that appeal is by connecting forward thinkers—clients, prospective clients, investors, employees and communities—with the experts in its orbit.
So, the company has created the Expertise Locator, “an ever-expanding system that leads people to knowledge by juxtaposing relevant business and technology experts in a potentially infinite number of digital experiences.”
Expertise as product
IBM got out of the business of making laptops and many other consumer products a few years ago. Unlike Apple and other computer hardware companies, IBM doesn’t really have products that people can ogle in a store. So the company had to decide how people would experience IBM.
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