What do companies banging around the digital-transformation obstacle course need to soothe the contusions? Probably not a technology trial sign-up that asks their mothers’ maiden name.

“When users come, you have to give them the best experience possible, because you never get a second chance to make a good first impression,” said Janine Sneed (pictured), chief digital officer of hybrid cloud at IBM Corp.

The race to win customers may be for the vendor to hold out the easiest “in” to product trials and demos. This is why IBM is allowing prospective users to digitally consume its solutions through cloud-based demos that ask for zero information and don’t require any engagement with company personnel. “We’re keeping it very low touch, because we know that’s how users want to engage,” Sneed said.

Sneed spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at the IBM Think event in Las Vegas, Nevada. They discussed how IBM is upping the speed limit on product development and making solutions digitally available. (* Disclosure below.)

Speed demon product dev gets demos off the ground

Aside from scrapping the wall of sign-up fields, IBM is striving to make solutions that cut to the chase, according to Sneed. A gaggle of IBM solutions are produced through ecosystem partnerships. The chefs in IBM’s product-development kitchen are boiling all bits and bytes down to use-case ready units, she added.

IMB recently launched its Digital Technical Engagement program. The web page offers demos, proofs of technologies and tutorials on IBM solutions without asking any information of short-term users. The program tumbled out rapidly from the company’s increasingly agile product-dev culture, Sneed stated. Just by gathering a few creatives from the chief information officer’s office, IBM Design, marketing, etc., and running experiments, the site was up and running in a remarkably short time.

The IBM Cloud Private section, for instance, offers three product demos and one guided demo. So far, “we’ve had 10,500 users try that guided demo and our [net promoter score] is 56,” Sneed concluded.

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: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for IBM Think. Neither IBM, the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE