[Updated Oct. 3, 2014] Every company in the business of transforming today’s omnichannel/mobile customer experience (CX) has its version of “Lather, Rinse, Repeat.” For Oracle’s CX business unit, the central tenets are “Engage, Empower, Adapt.” Company executives, go-to-market partners and customers confirmed the power of this framing at Oracle OpenWorld, the annual event that, this year, attracted over 60,000 attendees, exhibitors and presenters.
Based on on presentations of the CX portfolio, technology roadmap and an sales/engagement model called “Oracle Roadmap to Modern,” I came away from the CX track at OpenWorld more bullish about the business unit’s prospects than I had felt in prior years. Much of my optimism comes as a result of assessing the overall ability of Oracle to deliver on what Larry Ellison characterized as a promise he made 33 years ago when he founded the company. Although Ellison recently resigned as CEO of (a position he held since 1977), he still serves as the database software giant’s as chief visionary, in his new role as Executive Chairman of Oracle Corporation and Chief Technology Officer.
I used the description “database software giant” as a loaded (and inaccurate) term. The main messaging that was launched with Ellison’s initial keynote (on Sunday evening) is that Oracle offers “engineered solutions” that orchestrate hardware (think speedy Sun Microprocessor-based units) and software working together. In past OpenWorlds, I got the distinct impression that accomplishing such a simple sounding goal is a lot harder than it sounds. But another upbeat message from Ellison’s keynote is that “Oracle is a Buy and Make” company. Signalling that it will continue to make acquisitions to fill capability gaps in technology, process, and people.
The second part of the “engineered solutions” message is that neither business unit executives or IT personnel should care whether the engineered solutions are running “in the cloud” or on premises. As Ellison put it, his company is fulfilling on a promise that he made 33 years ago when founding the company, solutions are designed and architected so that the data and applications can reside just about anywhere and that it can be moved from one system to another (from premises to the cloud and back again) without losing data or having to “rewrite a single line of code.”
Ellison made good on this promise when he lorded over a demo of the new solution during his second keynote (on Tuesday). He showed how an application was developed to find instances that a specified term (like “Steve Jobs”) appears in a particular database (in this case Wikipedia). He ran the query, showed how impressively fast it was with an on-premises configuration. Then he used a few simple instructions from a console to move both data and application into the cloud and ran it again. The implications for firms that are finding it hard to decide the when, where and how of upgrading to the latest rev of Oracle software, or agonizing oover whether they want to move their solutions into a Software and a Service (SaaS) configuration, really don’t have to agonize anymore. They can try it out, see if it works and then, if it doesn’t, they can move it back.
The CX Business Unit is a direct beneficiary of this agile approach to application or service delivery. That’s how Oracle plans to support its customer base and attract new customers in the age of business transformation and IT transitions. It is especially meaningful in the context of investment in Customer Experience (CX) software, infrastructure or services. CX spans multiple channels, it involves a “fusion” of data from a multiplicity of sources and it is largely conducted in real-time to support conversations between individual customers or prospects and IVR systems, live agents and Intelligent Assistants. It is also one that has witnessed a good number of acquisitions designed to apply knowledge management and data analytics in real-time to step up the ability of enterprises to improve the quality of customer experience in measurable ways.
It has, to a large degree, done a credible job of assimilating major acquisitions like ATG, Eloqua, Inquira and RightNow and melding their software, features and functions into a compelling CX platform as well as the CX Cloud. As we noted in our White Paper on Predictive Analytics, issued last April:
Oracle has the “deepest bench” among the firms included in this study in terms of its ability to aggregate and analyze voluminous amounts of data at scale. It also has the capability to conduct analytics in real-time to support the intelligent routing, recommendations and agent prompting. It also has products and services that support reporting and measurement both to prove the value of the solution and to support efforts for learning and constant improvement. Where Oracle falls short is in providing simple point-of- entry and use cases that lead to specific, engineered outcomes. Instead, there are nearly unlimited possible deployment options and outcomes, including personal assistants, but almost all of them will require professional services from Oracle or third-party integrators to design and implement solutions.
Enterprises who feel the necessity to provide outstanding multi-channel or omnichannel customer care are evaluating all their options, both cloud-based and premises-based solutions. To its credit, Oracle CX has stepped up its ability to identify and address the “best entry point” through a program called “Oracle Roadmap to Modern,” which includes a structured way for CX professionals and purchase influencers to “focus on the customer journey and discover what has the most negative impact.” That’s a good place to start.
Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles
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