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IBM Teams Up With SAP to Tap Generative AI for Retail Sector

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International Business Machines Corporation (IBM - Free Report) has collaborated with SAP SE (SAP - Free Report) to tap generative AI technology within the retail industry. The collaboration is likely to facilitate higher productivity and help accelerate business transformation in consumer-packaged goods and retail firms.

Generative AI is a type of AI technology that can produce a wide array of content, including text, imagery, audio and synthetic data. It is driven by a large language model, which uses a lot of data to understand and generate conversations.

Leveraging indigenous IBM technologies such as IBM Garage methodology, the company aims to help business enterprises undergo rapid digital transformation by embracing generative AI. The IBM Garage approach enables firms to manage strategic initiatives, quantify business outcomes and advance organizational and cultural change through bold IT transformations, re-imagined customer and employee experiences and automated business processes.

IBM is further likely to help the clients complement SAP solutions with IBM Watsonx, a cutting-edge enterprise-focused AI and data platform designed to harness the power of advanced AI capabilities for businesses. IBM Watsonx offers a unified platform that enables enterprises to train, fine-tune and deploy AI solutions according to their requirements. Tailoring the AI per the business-specific needs significantly multiplies output. Watsonx exhibits greater flexibility and facilitates the seamless adaptation of traditional machine learning models and generative AI into new scenarios.

The collaboration will help wholesale distributors and retailers improve product distribution by feeding external data such as weather, traffic and local events into the SAP Direct Distribution solution and apply AI to identify optimal store delivery routes to reduce costs. It will also help to efficiently manage store-level assortments by using generative AI based on the market dynamics of each store, prior sales patterns, anticipated demand and current product mix. In addition, IBM will work with SAP to develop solutions that leverage automation and intelligent workflows to proactively deliver operational efficiencies based on AI.

Moreover, IBM will work closely with a diverse AI partner ecosystem through an open and collaborative approach to plan, build, implement and operate generative AI solutions. This open ecosystem approach is likely to help clients define the right models and architecture to deliver their desired outcomes. This, in turn, is expected to strengthen its market position in the rapidly evolving landscape of technology optimization and management.  

IBM expects its growth to be driven primarily by analytics, cloud computing and security services. A better business mix, improving operating leverage through productivity gains and increased investments in growth opportunities will likely drive its profitability. IBM is poised to benefit from strong demand for hybrid cloud and AI, driving growth in the Software and Consulting segments.

The stock has gained 11.2% over the past year compared with the industry growth of 6.6%.

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IBM presently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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