IBM and Salesforce, a customer relationship management provider, have announced a strategic partnership to deliver joint solutions designed to leverage artificial intelligence, with implications for AI-powered customer engagement solutions for the healthcare industry.
The partnership will integrate IBM’s Watson AI capabilities directly into the Salesforce Intelligent Customer Success Platform, with the goal of combining deep customer insights from Salesforce Einstein with Watson's structured and unstructured data sources.
The IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein platforms will work together to create AI-powered customer engagement across industries, including healthcare, financial services and weather, the company said in a joint press release.
Both companies already have healthcare platforms: Salesforce Health Cloud’s patient relationship management software incorporates Einstein and IBM Watson for Oncology analyzes the meaning and context of structured and unstructured data in clinical notes and reports to assist doctors with selecting a treatment pathway.
The initial rollout of IBM and Salesforce's products will include IBM Weather Insights for Salesforce and IBM Application Integration Suite for Salesforce.
“Within a few years, every major decision—personal or business—will be made with the help of AI and cognitive technologies,” Ginni Rometty, chairman, president and chief executive officer, IBM, said in a prepared statement. “This year we expect Watson will touch one billion people—through everything from oncology and retail to tax preparation and cars. Now, with today's announcement, the power of Watson will serve the millions of Salesforce and Einstein customers and developers to provide an unprecedented understanding of customers."
