Recently in an interview with Fortune, IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty said that a new technological era is upon us, one that marries digital business with digital intelligence. She referred to it as cognitive business.

In a recent hangout, Laurent Tarin, Offering Manager for Smarter Process IBM Cloud, and I discussed the best ways to talk to customers about how cognitive business operations can help them succeed.

Cognitive operations can add a real, measurable value to a business. Laurent started out with a great example from the insurance industry: “Now insurance agents can have access to the exact data they need to sign a client, or reject a client, in seconds.”

And I noted that data actually has a shelf life. Data loses value the longer it sits. Social media is a great example here—it’s better to act on a negative comment sooner rather than later.

So how do we help traditional businesses evolve into cognitive ones? How do we talk to our customers about being comfortable with this change? Let’s summarize the three most important things we need to understand about cognitive business operations, in terms of helping your customers:

1. Cognitive business operations open a field of new intelligent applications that have never been possible before.
2. Cognitive business operations are not just about creating this new generation of intelligent applications. It is also about leveraging the existing ones by infusing cognitive intelligence into their processes and business decisions.
3. By unlocking their dark data and leveraging cognitive capabilities, customers will have a new competitive advantage.

The opportunity for Business Partners is unlimited, so consider becoming an IBM Business Partner today.

As Laurent mentioned, “Think of cognitive business operations as processes and decisions that can sense, respond and learn. Business operations infused with cognitive capabilities capitalize on data to heighten awareness of workflows, context and environment. Cognitive business operations continuously learn, yielding more accurate forecasting and greater operational effectiveness—and decision-making at the speed of streaming data.”

Watch this fascinating, informative hangout and hear the full story. Bookmark the IBM Business Partner Inform page, and let us know how we can help you succeed. If you aren't working with IBM today, call 800-426-9990 to speak to a representative to discuss becoming an IBM Business Partner.