Zilker Technology Wins IBM’s Watson Build Challenge for North America

Zilker Technology has been selected as the North American champion of the Watson Build Challenge for its API driven application, “Origin”. Origin, at its core, is an application designed to give sustainable, organic food providers control of both the quality and source loyalty of the products they market. Throughout the process of building Origin, IBM provided Zilker with access to IBM development tools, business mentors and cognitive specialists to bring its concept to life.

IBM’s Watson Build is an annual global initiative designed to accelerate the adoption of Watson throughout the Partner Ecosystem and encourage the development of AI solutions on IBM Cloud. The initiative gave Partners the opportunity to work with IBM experts, access to rich learning resources, and receive Watson and Cloud services credits to apply to their build. Throughout the 2019 event, Partners identified industry problems, created innovative AI solutions, and built business plans detailing their solution strategies.

“I’m delighted to announce that Zilker Technology is our 2018 NA Champion,” said Dorothy Copeland, Vice President, IBM Ecosystem Partners, North America. “They created an end-to-end solution that provides food-tracking and payment optimization throughout the food distribution network to help farmers, wholesalers, retailers — all the way to the consumer. Their solution ensures that farmers are paid in a timely manner, the supply chain knows the provenance of their goods, and consumers know where their products come from. We chose this because it is a clear problem that’s not well addressed today by other solutions, and we were impressed by the completeness of the solution, the demo, the materials presented, and the commercial-readiness of this solution.”

Utilizing Watson APIs, Predictive Analytics, Machine Learning and Blockchain, Organic Food Brand Owners are enabled to make decisions about their supply chain and cash management processes. Zilker identified that a common problem in the Organic Food industry is the ability for Brand Owners to create loyalty with their farmers. However, by gaining visibility into the payment cycle they can identify breakdowns in their process and ensure timely payments, making them a favorite among preferred farmers.  Additionally, Brand Owners can begin to reward Exporters for consistent product ratings which creates a dependable supply chain of product. Through the Origin application, Brand Owners now have line of sight to product from sources they can rely on and Exporters who are consistently delivering top rated product.

“The hyperledger can be highly effective in the right industries, and we believe we have found a perfect fit in the organic food supply chain,” said Mark Lucente, Managing Partner at Zilker Technology.  “I am very proud of our team for their innovation and dedication to building this very meaningful solution,” “IBM is a great partner and has been incredibly supportive through the process, providing software, environments and guidance throughout the process.  We are excited to take this solution to market. ”

Zilker has deep experience in Watson APIs, Machine Learning and Blockchain.  The Watson Build Challenge has allowed Zilker to bridge these offerings and enhance what they do with ledger technology abilities.  The Zilker team is excited to be part of this unique opportunity not only for the competition, but the collaboration among team members. Learning new capabilities and being able to apply the Watson API technologies in meaningful and insightful ways is invigorating and provides growth for the entire team.  Zilker has been able to leverage these learnings on several new customer opportunities by showing the “art of the possible”. The Origin prototype has brought a new dimension to their sales process for what they can offer their customers. This experience and working directly with the IBM technical team has allowed Zilker to bridge the gap between products outside of IBM, and is allowing customers to gain unique advantages from IBM products.

Zilker will now move on to the next phase of the challenge which is the World Competition held at IBM’s flagship technology conference, Think.  Zilker is both a sponsor and presenter at the conference which is to be held February 12 – 15 in San Francisco, CA.

About Zilker Technology

Zilker Technology is an expert Digital Consultancy and Systems Integrator that combines the agility of a start-up with the experience and expertise of a global consulting firm. Zilker specializes in unlocking the value of client data and delivering it to new digital platforms. With a team of highly trusted industry experts, Zilker can create powerful digital solutions for customers, with the skills to integrate with very complex back-end systems both on-premise or in the cloud. For more, visit www.ztech.io.