IBM Watson Analytics

Watson Analytics is the innovation cognitive service provided as the tool for work with means of predictive analytics to any categories of users.

2018: Use in IBM for determination of qualification of employees

In July, 2018 IBM announced implementation in the company of a system of forecasting of future employees productivity. Instead of "manually" estimating workers on the executed projects, IT giant decided to seize the Watson platform opportunities to predict whether to cope the employee with assigned tasks.

The Watson Analytics system intended for studying, visualization and data view is the basis for the solution. It automatically processes data the obtained made and issues recommendations about the best use of results.

Whether the employee will cope? IBM estimates personnel using AI of Watson

The research tool by means of which users to load the data is added to the platform. A system automatically finds potentially correlated variables and compares them. The integrated predictive mechanism helps to receive predictive assessment on the basis of data retrieveds, the tool of the reporting represents results in a user-friendly form.

The artificial intelligence in Watson Analytics is applied to assessment of future labor productivity of employees, undertaking work of department of work with personnel. According to the Bloomberg news agency, for drawing up the forecast of individual performance artificial intelligence analyzes data of IBM in which experience of employees and the projects executed earlier is reflected. He estimates what skills and qualities they can offer the companies in the future.

Besides, Watson uses information from the database of IBM to estimate whether the skill level of employees grew and whether they managed to improve and broaden the sphere of the working skills. The received rating of performance is transferred to HR managers who solve on the basis of this forecast what educational programs, advertizing and incentive campaigns can be necessary for employees.

IBM considers that employees productivity assessment using AI can become a necessary incentive to advanced training – eventually, the computer will not deceive, but he will not begin to be against the person prejudiced.

IBM claims that Watson Analytics predicts future employees productivity with a 96 percent accuracy. Considering that IBM totals 380 thousand employees worldwide, use of artificial intelligence considerably will cut down expenses of the company as careful processing of such data array requires huge number of experienced managers with the personnel and impressive investments of time. Watson very quickly can also precisely give to each employee a comprehensive assessment on the basis of all available information.

Representatives of IBM consider that the similar technology can be used in all spheres where wage workers are involved, and implementation of technology at all offices of IBM company will become the first step to mass mastering of new territories.^[1]

Artificial intelligence help personnel officers. For example, the recruiter can make the description of a vacancy, and the program will collect and will analyze a set of data from different sources and will offer it the candidates having an optimal set of qualities. There are programs which help to analyze correspondence of employees by e-mail and to determine the level of their job satisfaction. The artificial intelligence can be used also for identification of employees who with high probability it is left the company.

But technologies have also weaknesses. The artificial intelligence can give preference to the candidates having that a set of skills with which the program is already familiar. Too relying on technology, managers can refuse to take out own judgments. And desire to collect about employees is as much as possible data necessary for the systems of artificial intelligence, can induce employers to break limits of privacy.

2014: Announcement of Watson Analytics service

On September 17, 2014 the IBM company provided Watson Analytics - the service capable to understand natural languages.

Watson Analytics provides a continued access to means of predictive and visual analytics. The first version of service represents the conditional and free service compatible to desktop PCs and mobile devices. As a part of service the full range of tools of analytics, including the organization of convenient access to services of refining and data storage is offered, helping to collect information and to prepare reports in difficult formats, for the subsequent analysis and visualization, decision making and interaction.

IBM Watson Analytics will help to automate preprocessing of data, predictive analytics and visualization and to be focused on tasks of specialists in the field of marketing, sales, operating activities, finance and personnel management.

Watson Analytics provides a complex set of cloud services, unlike the means of analytics created for specific analysis types of data. Users set a task, and Watson Analytics helps them to define data source, to make preprocessing, to collect valuable information, to predict results, to visualize data, to create the report, to share it with colleagues.

Watson Analytics uses predictive analytics on purpose automatically to find the most relevant information, patterns and communications. This process involves new questions and outputs, bringing users to the solution of the most important business challenges.

A system "understands" natural languages, making work with tools as predictive analytics easier by means of an opportunity to answer key questions, for example:

• "What key factors of growth in sales of my company?";
• "What privileges will help to hold employees?";
• "What deals will be closed successfully from bigger probability?".

The service allows to understand why these or those events took place or most likely will occur. All this information will be provided in terms familiar to the user. Interacting with analytical reports, users can adjust the requests to improve the end result of work.

Service works in "cloud" and will be available in the environment of SoftLayer and also through the "cloud" exchange IBM Cloud Marketplace. Availability to beta testing - in the next 30 few days (for September 17, 2014), for conditional and free use — since November, 2014.

In December, 2014 the user Watson Analytics Community group which tasks include collecting and distribution of news on this subject, generalization of the best practices, technical support and training began to function. Service is implemented based on means and technologies of the content analytics with which creation Blue giant borrows many years. Commissioning in 2010 of the IBM Watson supercomputer (called in honor of the founder of IBM), specially "ground" under the solution of analytical tasks in the questions-answers mode became one of key events in this story. This computer system implemented within the general IBM DeepQA project ("deep questions and answers"), includes 90 IBM p750 servers, each of which is equipped with four eight-nuclear POWER7 processors, with the total random access memory capacity more than 15 of Tb. A system proved the mental abilities in February, 2011, having won Jeopardy TV show! (in the Russian option — The Game) two best people players.