SPECIALISTS from the International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation coming from nine countries in the world will be in Bacolod City Thursday for a scheduled one-day training.

The said training aims to "provide education on a variety of business and information technology (IT) subjects".

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IBM will have project proponent Bacolod-Negros Occidental Federation for Information and Communications Technology (BNefit) Inc. as partner for said activity, which will kick off 9 a.m. at Circle Inn Hotel, Bacolod City, said project also got support from the Australian Business Volunteers.

"Dubbed as XceleRate 2009, the project is a three-day day program, which starts with the business development training, and continues on to a whole-day faculty development training on October 27 at the West Negros University and a student development workshop on November 3 at the University of St. La Salle - Bacolod," a press release said.

"XceleRate 2009 is for local business leaders seeking to develop and grow their business with new or improved strategies and solutions, for academic faculty and staff seeking to increase skills and understand the latest trends and issues, and college and university students seeking to develop highly demanded skills for the future," said Bacolod City Councilor Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, who chairs the BNefit.

Jaydip Mukherjee from the Growth Market Sales of IBM-India is expected to discuss the topic "Trends in E-Commerce Solutions for Business". Training participants would learn the latest trends in e-Commerce and "how they affect the way business is being conducted on the web".

Senior strategist Duke Chang of IBM-USA will discuss "Business Process Management and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)" for participants to understand the challenges facing businesses today and "how the discipline of business process management can help increase efficiency in business and to discuss the strategic importance of BPO and implications for Bacolod City".

IBM Brazil's marketing manager Gisele Mantovani, on the other hand, will roll out the topic "Marketing in the 21st Century", a presentation bound to "determine if the web is right for you, and then use the right methods to exploit its marketing power".

IBM Finland bid manager Jaana Happonen will tackle "Creating an Effective Proposal", which seeks to "provide learning on how to build winning proposal in an effective way".

In the topic, Happonen is set to present "different types of proposals and the main elements of proposal building, including proposal management, solution design, competitor analysis and value add, pricing, risk mitigation, proposal writing and legal issues".

IBM has been well known through most of its recent history as the world's largest computer company and systems integrator.

With over 398,455 employees worldwide, IBM is the largest and most profitable information technology employer in the world.

IBM holds more patents than any other U.S.-based technology company and has eight research laboratories worldwide.

The company has scientists, engineers, consultants and sales professionals in over 170 countries.

IBM employees have earned five Nobel prizes, four Turing awards, nine national medals of technology, and five national medals of science. As a chipmaker, IBM has been among the world's top 20 semiconductor sales leaders the past years.

BNefit, on the other hand, "represents the collective effort of the academe and human resource development, real estate and business and local governments to undertake projects and programs complementary to the vision of making Bacolod City and Negros Occidental as viable locations for ICT and business process outsourcing (BPO) services."