Sanko, a Japanese consulting firm that specializes in work for utility companies, is another pilot customer looking to streamline its operations.

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California's XCOR Aerospace also is developing a reusable vehicle that will take a pilot and a front-seat customer to the edge of space -- for pleasure or to transport scientific payloads that would benefit from microgravity.

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In some industries, lengthy Pilot tests are required before an enterprise customer will sign a definitive purchase order.

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In such cases, always extract meaningful compensation from these Pilot customers to offset your costs and to increase the likelihood that the Pilot user will convert to a paying customer.

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In a pilot project, a major bank has used some of the skills which went into Watson to support customer reps in call centers, achieving a 30 to 35 percent increase in up-sell and cross-sell.

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