At the forefront of this year’s Oracle CloudWorld event in Las Vegas, Oracle has unveiled several significant enhancements to its Unity Customer Data Platform (CDP), part of the broader Oracle Fusion Cloud CX suite. These updates are aimed squarely at improving the B2B buying process, with a key focus on creating stronger synergies between sales and marketing teams.
Oracle Unity CDP, which has only been in the market for a few years, is already making strides in how businesses can leverage data. Its latest improvements aim to bring together data from both front-end and back-office sources to deliver a more comprehensive understanding of customer behaviour and relationships.
New Unity Capabilities for B2B
Among the headline features is the Account Profile Explorer, a tool designed to give sales and marketing teams a unified view of customer data, integrating insights from marketing, sales, service, and back-office systems such as finance, contracts, product usage, and supply chain data. This is seen as a game-changer in bridging the gap between departments that often work in silos.
Rob Pinkerton, Senior Vice President at Oracle, commented on the transformative potential of this feature: “This is where sales and marketing teams are coming together again. With Account Profile Explorer, these teams can now focus their efforts where they are most likely to succeed, cutting down inefficiencies in their workflows.”
Additionally, Oracle has introduced AI-driven buying group and opportunity scoring, which analyses customer engagement data to prioritise sales opportunities. Other key innovations include industry onboarding accelerators, with industry-specific templates and data models, and Oracle Analytics Cloud integration, enabling advanced data visualisations and decision support for B2B teams.
Merging Front-End and Back-Office Data
A unique aspect of Oracle’s updated Unity CDP is its ability to draw on back-office data, something its competitors are still catching up on. “There’s gold in back-office data,” quipped Pinkerton, highlighting Oracle’s ability to integrate data from areas like contracts and supply chains, which are critical for many industries. This capability is essential for larger enterprises with complex product and service offerings, often flying under the radar as they deliver critical infrastructure and machinery across sectors.
This fusion of front-end and back-office data provides businesses with a holistic view of their commercial relationships, essential for B2B organisations looking to streamline their go-to-market strategies. This is especially important as more companies adopt recurring revenue and consumption-based business models.
AI Enhancements for Smarter Selling
Oracle is also leveraging generative AI to boost efficiency in B2B workflows. For instance, AI tools have been integrated into the company’s CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) systems, helping sales teams by summarising contracts, generating emails, and producing executive briefings. This integration aims to significantly reduce the time it takes for businesses to process contracts and respond to customer queries, marking a new era in automated customer engagement.
Supporting B2C While Focusing on B2B
Although these announcements have a strong B2B focus, Oracle’s commitment to B2C remains intact. Products like Responsys continue to serve the consumer market, with Oracle Unity CDP playing a vital role in managing first-party data for B2C brands. “We’re still very much focused on the B2C side of things,” Pinkerton assured. “AI is reshaping how consumers engage with brands, and we’re helping businesses leverage first-party data to make more informed decisions.”
Oracle’s Competitive Edge
Incorporating back-office data into a CDP isn’t an entirely unique idea—SAP has been working on similar integrations. However, Oracle’s strength lies in the depth of its enterprise solutions. Its massive back-office offerings, such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), are seamlessly integrated with its customer experience tools, making Oracle particularly well-positioned to offer a more complete picture of the customer journey, both in B2B and B2C markets.
With the ability to build a “composable” structure leveraging Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse, businesses can now store and manage both customer-facing and back-office data in one unified system, further enhancing the potential of the Unity CDP.
Why It Matters
As the digital economy grows more complex, having a complete and accurate view of customers, especially in the B2B space, has become vital. Oracle’s Unity CDP allows businesses to not only better understand their customer relationships but also improve how they sell, service, and support those customers. With AI-driven tools and a unified data platform, Oracle is positioning itself as a leader in the future of B2B marketing and sales.
Ultimately, these updates are about giving businesses the tools to work smarter, not harder—making better decisions faster and enabling stronger relationships across all customer touchpoints.
Reference: https://martech.org/oracle-enhances-its-unity-cdp-offering/
