IBM has introduced new data discovery and question-and-answer capabilities for Watson Analytics that promises to make it easier for users to extract insights from their data. IBM also announced widespread adoption, with half a million professionals registering for the Watson data exploration and visualization service since its introduction less than a year ago.

Watson Analytics now allows users to bring more external data sources to a business question, helping to ensure the right data is collected and curated to add context, depth and confidence to every decision. This includes access to data from IBM DB2, IBM Informix, IBM Netezza, IBM SQL Database, IBM dashDB and popular third party data sources.

The ability to securely connect to corporate data from the cloud is being enhanced with a new functionality from IBM’s cloud-based data refinement and access service, Dataworks. The new capability calls on Secure Gateway technology to establish a tunnel between the user’s on-premise databases and Watson Analytics, automatically encrypting data, and using Docker containers to transport it through a dedicated connection to allow for secure analysis. 

In collaboration with industry partners, IBM is introducing new data discovery models – called Expert Storybooks – that will help guide users on how to understand, learn and reason with different types of data sources to surface the most relevant facts and uncover patterns and relationships for predictive decision making.

Examples of the types of Storybooks IBM will make available are as follows:

• Deloitte - a Storybook that measures the effectiveness of incentive programs to help sales leadership determine how and when to effectively deploy short term incentives for revenue uplift.
• Twitter - a Storybook that helps users analyze social media data from Twitter to measure reputational risk, and also get a better understanding about how social sentiment could reveal drivers behind fluctuations in stock prices in real time.
• Intangent - a Storybook that will help finance managers examine the relationships between pay, performance, and credit risk in lending to better align incentive compensation with risk taking.

MinterEllison, one of Asia Pacific’s largest multinational law firms, is using Watson Analytics to identify new business opportunities. The company is integrating and analyzing financial data from the Australian Stock Exchange on top of client performance data, and in doing so, is uncovering correlations between a slowdown in revenue generation from several clients with a slowdown in their particular industry sector. Watson Analytics is also able to help identify which industries would be more profitable for the firm to enter, which has led it to redirect resources to pursue more profitable client opportunities.

Mears Group, a social-housing repair and healthcare provider in the UK, is using Watson Analytics to analyze injury reports to improve safety for its workers. The company maintains a database of more than 600 million records, including accident reports on injuries, which it recently moved into Watson Analytics to identify correlations that would lead to safer working conditions. Using natural-language processing, Mears Group followed different lines of questions to reveal where, how and when its operatives and care-givers were sustaining a disproportionate amount of injuries and near-miss events. The senior health and safety team used the analysis to develop the future strategy of the health safety focus for the next 12 months, with specific task teams made accountable for newly-identified areas of concern. Watson Analytics is now part of the quarterly agenda for the health and safety meetings, covering all group activities.

Caliber Patient Care provides patient transport services for clients between their homes, hospices, hospitals and treatment facilities. With over 30 franchisees across the U.S., the company’s drivers cover 75,000 miles per month, with data on the each trip tracked in its fleet management system. The company recently moved that data into Watson Analytics to help identify new routes and processes that could be implemented to save costs and optimize travel time. Analysts were immediately presented with suggestions for visualizations that helped them see the true cost of the rides that they were discounting. By posing additional questions about the missed revenue, and presenting the data as a visualization, Watson Analytics helped Caliber Patient Care identify the cause of the missed revenue faster –and enabled them to make data- driven decisions about company policies that will help them charge for the missed miles. As a result, they expect to earn an additional $750,000 in revenue by the end of the year.

Paschall Truck Lines (PTL), a trucking company based in Murray, Kentucky, is looking to Watson Analytics to build predictive models that will help them identify reasons that lead to employee churn and geo-spatial turnover before it happens. The company processes 5,000 applications and hires 200 drivers per month, collecting data on everything from the driver's past experience and work history to geo location and more. By moving that data into Watson Analytics, hiring managers will be able to draw correlations between hiring area and retention terms, and will look to reveal insights on the performance of their drivers that will lead them to restructure hiring patterns, reduce turnover and increase retention.

The new data connectors and Expert Storybooks for Watson Analytics will be available in Beta in November 2015.

 www.watsonanalytics.com