Poorly trained salespeople take heart. If you’ve ever had to evade a customer’s question about your merchandise, help is on the way. Red Ant, who won the IBM Watson Challenge, is creating an app, RetailOS, that provides product information on the spot.

A survey showed that out of 1,000 retail workers aged 18–55 plus, 50 percent admitted to lacking product knowledge. Worse yet, 43 percent admitted that they lied to customers at least weekly because they didn’t have a good answer to a question. A few said they hid in the bathroom to avoid an inquisitive customer. Red Ant is stepping in to save the day – and the sales. Sixty-three percent of the respondents thought having a tablet on the sales floor with them to refer to could increase their sales by 10-30 percent. An even larger number, 74 percent, claimed that having mobile technology to depend on would have a positive effect on their morale and productivity.

This writer is among many who declare: “I knew more about the product than the person selling it.” Red Ant strives to correct that by supplying the clerk with product information, local pricing, tech specs, and customer reviews to arm them with accurate ammunition to close the sale. Beyond product information, the Red Ant app, RetailOS, provides information about the customer to help the salesperson direct them to a desirable item. It stores their demographics which indicate buying preferences, shows their actual purchase history, and lets the salesperson know what the customer has on their wish list. The clerk can view the information on a handheld screen or have the information whispered in their ear via text-to-speech through an earpiece.

Alex Sbardella, Head of Product; Stephen Keep, Lead Developer; Dan Hartveld, Technical Director, accept a 2014 IBM Watson Mobile Developer Challenge Award from Steve Gold, Vice President, IBM Watson Group (Photo Credit: Visually Attractive, Inc.)

Red Ant combined their RetailOS in store mobility platform with IBM’s Watson to come up with a customized retail helper for beleaguered, undertrained retail sales staff. The company was one of three that won recognition and assistance from IBM to implement their prototype. Steve Gold, VP of the IBM Watson Group said: “Red Ant has discovered an innovative way to apply Watson that can deliver demonstrable business benefits.”

See Alex Sbardella, Head of Product Development, talk about Red Ant’s RetailOS in this video:

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IBM challenged developers to write apps for Watson, their intelligent contextual super computer. Submissions arrived from across the globe. More than 40 countries responded with ideas submitted from 400 companies. Only 25 lucky companies were chosen to get access to Watson in order for them to build a prototype of their proposal.

IBM then backed the winners helping them take their idea from prototype into an actual application for consumers. The three winners of the contest were GenieMD, obviously related to health, Majestyk Apps, related to childhood education, and RedAnt, related to retail selling.

If you want to develop something that will run on Watson, you must apply to IBM for permission to access the platform. However, Big Blue is hoping more developers will want to write for their super computer. Obviously, altruism aside, more applications running on Watson translates into revenue for IBM.

IBM hopes the contest will build awareness beyond that generated by Watson squaring off against questions from the TV game show Jeopardy. IBM apparently saw the movie “Her” as a challenge to enlarge upon what Watson already is capable of. Mike Rhodin, senior VP of the Watson Group talked of the hopes for Watson’s future in his blog. He says the world is moving towards cognitive computing. To that end, the Watson Group is creating a library for cognitive technologies which includes the areas of Perceiving, Reasoning, Relating and Learning.

Never Dreamed Watson

The Watson Cloud Developer Enterprise offers training with twelve month access to Watson Developer Cloud, data, and development tools. It allows enterprises to create non-production cognitive applications using their own data and expertise. This is an opportunity to learn about the new era of computing and evaluate potential for live deployment. Successful applications could be sold on the IBM Cloud Marketplace.

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