Prolifics is pleased to announce that we’ve earned a 2019 IBM Beacon Award for Outstanding Analytics Solution. Revealed at the IBM PartnerWorld at Think conference in San Francisco, California on February 11, 2019, we were selected by a panel of expert judges consisting of IBM executives, industry analysts and industry experts. The award recognizes Prolifics’ exceptional work in driving business value by delivering world-class solutions through our Retail Opportunities Powered by the AI Ladder solution.
The solution aggregates and cleanses data to create organized and trustworthy information. It charts a clear path to AI-powered innovation and revenue streams, helping businesses harness their data and leverage AI to find ways to monetize it. With rapid deployment and a flexible cost structure, the solution is quick, effective, and efficient to implement, regardless of business scope or industry.
Prolifics was selected among dozens of global applicants based on an in-depth application process that included customer testimonials. This win is a testament not only to our commitment to innovation, but also to our customers and their satisfaction and business growth.
Prolifics was one of 18 award winners and dozens of finalists for categories encompassing a wide range of solution and services areas – from analytics and cloud to security and customer engagement. The IBM Beacon Awards program recognizes IBM Business Partners that deliver exceptional solutions to help drive business value and transform the way clients and industries operate. This year’s program is especially remarkable as the 20th anniversary of the IBM Beacon Awards. Winning an IBM Beacon Award will forever mark our place in IBM’s storied tradition of constant innovation.
You can find out more about the 2019 IBM Beacon Awards, including details on all winners and finalists, and learn more about the IBM PartnerWorld program.
What is the IBM AI Ladder framework?
The solution behind Prolifics’ win, Retail Opportunities Powered by the AI Ladder, is built on IBM’s own model for enterprise AI adoption. The AI Ladder breaks the journey to becoming an AI-driven business into four progressive stages, often called “rungs”:
- Collect – Bring in data of every type, from any source, regardless of where it lives, so it’s accessible without being tied to one system or format.
- Organize – Turn raw, scattered data into a trusted, governed, business-ready foundation with quality and compliance controls built in.
- Analyze – Build and scale AI models with transparency and trust, turning organized data into insight rather than just information.
- Infuse – Operationalize AI across the business, embedding predictions and automation directly into everyday processes and decisions rather than leaving them as one-off experiments.
The idea behind the framework is that each rung compounds the value of the one before it – a business can’t reliably analyze data it hasn’t organized, and it can’t infuse AI into operations built on analysis it doesn’t trust. For retail specifically, this progression maps directly onto real pain points: fragmented POS, e-commerce, and inventory data (Collect), inconsistent product and customer records across channels (Organize), demand and pricing models retailers can actually explain to stakeholders (Analyze), and AI-driven recommendations or restocking decisions running inside day-to-day operations rather than a dashboard nobody opens (Infuse).
Why this mattered for retail in 2019 – and still does
Retailers have long sat on more data than almost any other industry transactions, loyalty programs, supply chain, in-store traffic, digital behavior but turning that volume into monetizable insight has historically been the harder problem than collecting it in the first place. Prolifics’ Retail Opportunities solution was built specifically to shorten that path: aggregate and cleanse the data first, then let AI find the revenue opportunities buried inside it, with a cost structure flexible enough that it didn’t require retailers to commit to a multi-year transformation program before seeing value.
That framing has only become more relevant since. The AI Ladder concept IBM built in 2019 is essentially the same maturity model retailers still use today to plan generative AI and agentic AI rollouts you still can’t infuse trustworthy AI into pricing, inventory, or personalization decisions without first solving the collection and governance problem underneath it.
Why the IBM Beacon Award carries weight
The Beacon Awards aren’t a vendor popularity contest winners are chosen by a judging panel of IBM executives, independent industry analysts, and outside experts, based on a full application that includes direct customer testimonials, not just a self-submitted case study. Being named 1 of 18 winners (out of dozens of finalists spanning analytics, cloud, security, and customer engagement) in the program’s 20th-anniversary year placed Prolifics in a fairly small cohort of partners recognized for solutions with proven, customer-validated business outcomes not just technical novelty.
About Prolifics
Prolifics creates a competitive advantage for organizations around the world by implementing customized, end-to-end IT solutions that achieve business success, leveraging leading technologies in a global delivery model. For more than 40 years, the company’s technology expertise, industry-specific insights and certified technology accelerators have transformed organizations around the world by solving complex IT challenges.
