A little while back I blogged about Customer Data Platforms and their role in coordinating multiple channels when trying to develop customer-centric marketing solutions. More recently I caught up with Provenir – a company I know from its risk-centric decisioning platform – and with the team behind their new customer listening product. I plan to blog about the product in the future (once I have had a detailed briefing) but it struck me that this functionality, while clearly part of a Marketing Decision Management solution – pulls together a variety of elements and that don’t fit neatly into existing categories – it’s not campaign management, data management, content management, CRM or customer analytics. Instead it is focused on customer-centric connectivity – listening to customers across all channels so you can build a coherent picture of their wants and needs.

What’s crucial, though, in these kinds of systems is that you don’t just listen – you must also be able to learn (analytically) from what you hear and you must be able to act appropriately based on what you lean.

It’s also worth nothing that:

  • This action could be in any channel and could be immediate or long delayed, depending on what might work best for your customer.
  • You need to know what you did and why, so that too becomes part of the customer record for future analysis and learning.
  • Sometimes the only way to learn is going to be by conducting experiments, trying something on a subset of your customers, so you need to be able to manage that too.
  • Sometimes what you know is about an anonymous visitor and you still have to act appropriately while fitting that behavior to a customer once you can.
  • What you hear might be structured or unstructured, streaming or static – it could have velocity, variety and volume – so be prepared for a wide range of Big Data sources

It’s easy to get caught up in the hype about “social listening” and social channels these days but the reality is that customers use these channels as well as your existing ones and that it is customer listening, customer analytics and customer next best action that matters.

BOSTON, MA – May 4, 2026 – Blue Polaris announced it has been awarded the North America Winner of the 2026 IBM Partner Plus Awards for the Transformational SaaS Application category at IBM Partner Plus Day during Think 2026. This award celebrates IBM business partners who demonstrated measurable improvements through efficiency, cost savings and productivity through IBM SaaS deployments.

 

“This recognition underscores the meaningful impact and innovation our partners are delivering across the IBM Ecosystem,” said Nicholas Rogers, GM of Americas Ecosystem at IBM. “We are proud to recognize Blue Polaris as a North America winner and celebrate the work they have done to help clients scale and accelerate AI outcomes through IBM services and solutions — over the past year and into the future.”

 

The IBM Partner Plus Awards recognize partners who deliver exceptional impact aligned with IBM’s strategic priorities. Thirty-four winners were selected from hundreds of global submissions across all geographies and seven categories. 

 

Partners eligible to win an award are part of IBM Partner Plus, a program designed to help deepen partners’ technical expertise, accelerate time to market and win with clients with AI and hybrid cloud. For more information on IBM Partner Plus, please visit www.ibm.com/partnerplus.