The incredible value of data that has earned it a spot above oil as the world’s most coveted resource is its potential to power business strategies with ultra-specific details that enable more informed decision-making. Now that organizations have that power, their next hurdle is effective implementation.

Katie Dunlap (pictured, right), vice president of global unified commerce and marketing GTM at Bluewolf an IBM Company, and Ben Cesare (pictured, left), global industry solutions lead, retail alliance ecosystem, at Salesforce.com Inc., spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the IBM Think event in San Francisco. They discussed how IBM and Salesforce work together to ensure data is used for a more personalized experience that benefit both company and consumer. (* Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following answers have been condensed for clarity.]

Martin: IBM is the number one implementer of Salesforce. Talk about the partnership.

Dunlap: That partnership leverages the best of the technology from Salesforce, as well as IBM, and together [we] create opportunities for the industry. Today we’re talking about retail.

Cesare: When you talk about Salesforce, you talk about marketing, commerce, and service cloud. We call that the engagement layer. That’s how we really interact with our consumers, and to have a great connection with consumers we need to have a great data insights. We need to understand what’s happening with all the information that drives choices for retailers. That’s why the relationship with IBM is so strong; it is a data-driven relationship.

Dunlap: The native functionality for Salesforce is Einstein, an intelligent layer; and for IBM it’s Watson. Looking at retail with commerce and marketing and service is the center of that conversation on the engagement layer. How are we working with a customer from a collection of data information standpoint and activating the data all the way through supply chain? It goes all the way through servicing that customer, returning, and making sure that information is specific.

One of the things that we partner with Salesforce on is the engagement layer, and we have access to Watson Embedded Business Assistant that goes out and talks to all the disparate systems. As a merchandiser, I can ask the question and receive information back from supply chain.

Furrier: Tell us about the changes in retail. What [are] some of the new experiences that are becoming new expectations?

Cesare: What you always want is a great customer experience, and what defines that is, “Are they serving me the products I want, when I want them? If I have a problem, how am I treated?” These are all things that we address with Salesforce solutions.

This year there were over $300 billion in markdowns for retailers. Half of those were unplanned, and that goes right to your [product and loss]. We want to make sure the things we do satisfy the consumer but not at the expense of the retailers. By using IBM supply chain data information, we can properly service you.

It’s not just the store online; it’s retail everywhere, someone selling their services to you. The holy grail is understanding you specifically. Data has become a much broader term; it’s just not numbers. Data is your trends on social media, videos you are viewing. All that together really gives a retailer information, better serve you.

Furrier: What are some of the learnings around this new engagement layer and with data intelligence?

Cesare: I think the leading thing I’ve learned is the power of personalization. If you look at someone’s shopper basket, there’s an amazing amount of things you could learn about them, but to do that for 25, 30 million customers is very difficult. To analyze the data, segment it, and personalize it to you is extremely powerful. If retailers can understand your lifestyle, that opens the door to so many products and services.

Commerce used to be a very linear thing, but now it’s happening wherever you are. You could be anywhere and execute a transaction. The distance between media and commerce has collapsed, It’s become real time. The immediacy of media and transaction [is] going to take retailers by surprise.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the IBM Think event. (* Disclosure: Salesforce.com Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Salesforce.com nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE