IBM signs deal with Polaris for social software solutions

Technology giant IBM has signed a contract with IT services firm Polaris Financial Technologies (FT) for using the US-based company's social software for a superior digital experience, improve workforce productivity and accelerate business growth.  

"By adopting IBM's enterprise social collaboration platform, Polaris FT is transforming how its 12,500 employees connect, communicate and collaborate to drive greater workforce productivity," IBM said in a statement.  

Working with IBM, Polaris designed and developed Octopus, an enterprise social platform, which runs on IBM Connections and uses  APIs (application programming interfaces) provided in the IBM Social Business Toolkit.  

Organisations around the globe continue to look for ways to create a smarter enterprise that connects customers, employees, business partners and other key stakeholders to share ideas, spur innovation, improve performance and outpace the competition, IBM Director (Social Business and Smarter Workforce) India/South Asia Anmol Nautiyal said.          

"Time and again, the answer continues to be social technologies. Whether delivered on-premise or in the cloud, social allows businesses to drive strong teaming both inside and outside the organisation which in the end leads to strong collaboration and workforce productivity," he added.          

This application makes it easy for IBM partners and clients like Polaris to build an entirely new class of cloud-based social business applications for their businesses using the Connections foundation, IBM said.          

With Octopus, Polaris is able to apply social networking, social learning, digital experiences and knowledge/content management tools based on an open cloud-based mobile architecture, it added.          

Octopus manages all project deliveries, customer related interactions, knowledge-sharing, online collaboration and employee engagements taking place across the business – a transformation that has helped increase total enterprise productivity.  

Through the 360-degree view and central information storage that Octopus enables, Polaris is no longer solely reliant on email to record, deliver and collaborate on projects and has improved the way it communicates and engages with customers, the NYSE-listed IBM said.          

"Our analysis has shown that Octopus has ushered an 8 per cent reduction in effort, lowered attrition by 4 per cent and has reduced on-boarding time by a whopping 75 per cent,"  

Polaris FT Chief Technology Officer Shashi Mohan said.