For time to come, we are very flexible in our costing: Rakesh Jaitly, Oracle

Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in the US. The company is into selling database software and technology, cloud engineered systems, and enterprise software products – particularly its own brands of database management systems. In 2019, Oracle was the second-largest software company by revenue and market capitalisation. The company offers a complete suite of integrated applications for Sales, Service, Marketing, Human Resources, Finance, Supply Chain and Manufacturing, plus Highly Automated and Secure Generation 2 Infrastructure featuring the Oracle Autonomous Database. 

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Over the past few months, businesses all over have been adapting to the changes in their own unique ways. Oracle with its latest applications has been a steadfast supporter for its customers and especially in the dire times that they are in. They are helping their customers to navigate through these delicate times by providing them with counsel and with cutting edge state of art technology. For example, fashion e-commerce company Myntra leverages Oracle Cloud CX to orchestrate workflows between customer service agents and its nearly 20 million active monthly customer users. This enables the fashion e-tailer to have a systematic and streamlined approach to deliver an end-to-end customer experience.

In a candid conversation with Adgully, Rakesh Jaitly, Senior Sales Director, Oracle Applications, speaks about how the company is helping and advising its clients to manage their customer data in different situations with their various customised applications.

Customer centricity is the backbone of any brand or organisation. During the pandemic this had got disrupted. What kind of trends you noticed during the pandemic and how Oracle helped many of his customers to stay relevant and helpful to their clients?

The pandemic has changed everything around us; and it has made customer centricity more important than ever. Every business tried to help their customer in the best way they could. Every decision was taken with customer at the heart of all the discussion. Sectors like e-commerce, essential services, etc., went out for their way to help their customers. The other significant result of the pandemic has been the speed of these changes. Changes that used to happen over years are happening over weeks. In my career, I have not seen the changes of this scale happening so fast. In order to help our customers to seize this opportunity to own these changes, we have announced a series of updates in our Oracle Cloud Customer Experience (CX) and Oracle Cloud CX Marketing. The updates includes Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Capabilities, New Zoom, Webex and Microsoft Team Integrations, New Content Management Capabilities, New Personalization Capabilities, New Loyalty and Engagement Capabilities, New Customer Intelligence Platform Enhancements and New Capabilities added on the AI, ML and Recommendations front.

There are already some behavioural changes with the consumers. The new normal is going to bring in further changes in the behaviour. How will your technology help to counter the new challenges and bring in efficiency to manage the customers?

Over the past few months, businesses all over have been adapting to the changes in their own unique ways. Some have been massively disrupted and are looking for business continuity for next couple of months. Whereas others have entered a prime growth stage in which they are seeing increased demand for what they offer. One thing they all have in common, however, is they all had to adjust their business models to align to the new environment.

Oracle has been a steadfast supporter for its customers and especially in the dire times that we are in. We are helping our customers to navigate through these delicate times by providing them with counsel and with cutting edge state of art technology. Just to explain it further with an example, Myntra, an Indian fashion e-commerce company, leverages Oracle Cloud CX to orchestrate workflows between customer service agents and its nearly 20 million active monthly customer users. This enables the fashion e-tailer to have a systematic and streamlined approach to deliver an end-to-end customer experience. Furthermore, in the wake of the country’s lockdown, Myntra uses existing data in different ways to help it deliver personalised content to customers based on their browsing history and shopping preferences – taking customer engagement to greater heights.

On one hand there are complaints and frustrations shown by clients on the current CRM technology that many have deployed. Oracle’s new technology offerings could be the right solution but what about the cost implications?

The severity of the pandemic forced us to drop the regular sales conversations that we used to have with our customers. So, we turned into a trusted advisor for our customers. Our customers could depend upon our counsel to tide through these difficult times. We understood the financial constraint that some of our customers were facing, so for the first time ever, we extended some solutions and tools free of cost to our customers. For time to come, we are very flexible in our costing. We do have set rates, but we do consider our customers’ situation before coming to any conclusion.

There is this new marketing jargon called Martech. Marketeers today are very keen to collaborate with technology to bring in effectiveness and cost control in their marketing efforts. What is Oracle’s role here and is there any technology solutions you are offering to marketeers?

A forward-thinking data strategy extends beyond marketing into service, sales, and commerce. Oracle understands consumers do not grasp the intricacies of brand interactions across touchpoints, but they do expect a seamless, connected experience centered on the brand, which a customer data platform can help provide.With 24/7 availability, digital and mobile access, flexibility, and efficiency customers are expecting instant solutions. It does not narrow down to just providing an interface in terms of app, building web usability, or putting in place fluid point-of-sale systems. Today, it is more about giving a single window to open which is more portable and universal, from the comfort of your home or even brushing through shelves in a shopping complex. Oracle Unity, Oracle’s enterprise-grade customer data platform (CDP), powers next-generation Martech strategies and enables forward-thinking marketers to unify customer data for segmentation and data-informed orchestration. That, in turn, will help provide a hyper-personalised experience.Oracle’s burgeoning Martech infrastructure will allow marketers to assess how engagement contributes to conversions across digital channels.

Managing customer data and helping marketeers eliminate all the costly and complex integration challenges is very important. How are you delivering these with your customers and what kind of innovations are happening here to simplify their life?

Today, we are surrounded by a lot of data, so we spent a lot of time surrounding our marketing automation tools with that data and intelligence so that marketers can do their job well. The marketers could connect the dots in such a way that they need less people to accomplish a lot more. Every marketer today is aiming for leveraging technologies like AR and VR and trying to develop voice-based assistance kills. There is a general thinking that success depends only on being the first to use any technology; to prove that we are being innovative. However, we need to understand that innovative technology would not be of much use if your audience is not mature or ready for this technology. There is another aspect, your audience could be too distracted to notice your innovative campaign. Modern and smart marketers understand the importance of both the media and use an optimum mix of the two to formulate a smart strategy. Sometimes, it is doing the simple things really well – like deep personalisation and recommendations that save consumers time and frustration in finding, and discovering the things they are looking for or interested in – that can get customers excited about working with a brand.

What are the future trends in technology one can look forward in managing customer data? How is artificial intelligence and machine learning helping companies and brands enhancing customer experience and building strong relationships?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become one of the most potent tools for the brands that wish to provide a hyper-personalised, exceptional customer experience. The availability of AI-enhanced customer relationship management (CRM) and customer data platform (CDP) software has brought AI to the enterprise without the high costs that were previously associated with the technology. AI, coupled with machine learning, for gathering and analysing social, historical, and behavioural data enables brands to gain a much more accurate understanding of its customers. Insights thus acquired are highly valuable for increasing sales opportunities and improve the customer journey.