Oracle CX targets data to expand marketer reach

Data is the river that powers all digital applications

Data remains the underlying foundation of digital value, enabling resource investment and activity targeting using audience and customer data. Omar Tawakol, senior vice president and general manager of Oracle Data Cloud,
provided TBR an update on new capabilities at the recent Oracle CX Analyst Summit.

Data as a Service (DaaS) represents the fourth pillar of the Oracle Cloud
computing strategy, alongside SaaS, PaaS and IaaS, providing over 3 billion global consumer profiles and $3 trillion of consumer transactions across 4,000 segments. Oracle's recently announced account-based marketing capability relies on a direct integration with Oracle Data Cloud to provide access to data on more than 1 million U.S.-based companies and over 40 million users.

B2B marketers can use the Oracle data to prospect for anonymous users based on account data, online behavioral data, and offline data such as past purchases or attendance at events and conferences. Marketers can systematically drive account-based retargeting, site and content optimization.

Most important to Oracle is the over 400 integrations with data ecosystem players across the agency, media, ad serving, ad network, attribution, data management platform and data services landscape. Oracle has integrations
across the major players of the audience-facing world, and integrations with first-party, internal lead and customer data provide additional levels of activity. This activity can be outbound to new targets via the recently acquired
Crosswise target matching technology or the internal Oracle Sales Cloud and Oracle Service Cloud integrations.

TBR perspective: Oracle helps marketers optimize customer experience from advertising to customer service

The Oracle CX team, led by Rondy Ng, senior vice president of application development, is focusing on integrating and expanding the core software assets the company acquired in building out the suite. Oracle is aggressively cross-selling its portfolio to customers of the acquired lines of business as well as across the Oracle applications and technology base. The Oracle CX Cloud Suite includes Oracle Service Cloud, Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle Commerce Cloud and Oracle Marketing Cloud.

Key elements of the ongoing strategy include:

• Cloud is the enabler of adoption, and Oracle CX Cloud is tied to all of Oracle’s cloud technologies.
• Customers are adding elements of the portfolio, and the number of clients that use two or more components of the CX Suite is increasing.
• Industry specialization on top of the core platforms is a key growth driver.
• Data remains a key differentiator, via BlueKai, DataLogix, AddThis and CrossWise.
• UX improvements via standardization on the Alta interface simplify adoption and training.

Oracle promotes a suite-driven adoption pattern that rests on common data, analytics and integrations. Enterprise effectiveness and outcomes are supported by unifying formerly siloed functions or bringing relevant data to roles
such as sales from across the enterprise.

TBR believes Oracle has a pool of core ERP, CRM, HCM and industry application customers that will benefit from this strategy and portfolio. Additionally, Oracle can cross-sell CX customers, increasing revenue and profit. Given success in both areas of sales, Oracle will be able to match or exceed digital marketing technology market growth rates and sustain a leadership position in TBR’s Digital Marketing Technology Benchmark.

As competing firms like SAP, Adobe, IBM, Nielsen and others begin to accelerate data services and economies, and TBR will be watching for the following markers:

• Does Oracle's DaaS become a fundamental service across all players from publishers to agencies to marketers? Oracle has a strong position, but vendors like IBM are investing to grow their own data services.
• Does Oracle's DaaS efforts around developers create a mature, thriving and influential ecosystem that allows Oracle to continue innovating beyond CX? 
• How will Oracle support the call for greater transparency into the use of data to reduce undesired targeting and increase consumer control over their data? This is an issue facing all agents in the digital ecosystem and a key component to reducing ad blocking.