Oracle has announced significant upgrades to its Unity Customer Data Platform (CDP) at CloudWorld 2024, with a focus on improving the collaboration between marketing and sales teams in the B2B space. The enhancements, part of Oracle Fusion Cloud CX, are aimed at simplifying B2B buying processes and integrating front-end and back-end data for a unified customer view.
These announcements were made at Oracle’s annual CloudWorld conference in Las Vegas, where the tech giant showcased new capabilities designed to enhance data-driven decision-making and support complex sales agreements.
Key New Features for Oracle Unity CDP
The latest improvements to Oracle Unity CDP centre around integrating customer data from both front-office and back-office systems, allowing businesses to draw on insights from marketing, sales, finance, and product usage data. Four new capabilities were introduced:
- Account Profile Explorer: A feature that enables a unified view of customer data, bringing together insights from sales, marketing, and service, while also incorporating back-office data such as finance, contracts, and supply chain.
- Buying Group and Opportunity Scoring: Powered by AI, this tool analyses signals from buying groups based on roles, titles, and engagement, helping to score and identify opportunities.
- Industry Onboarding Accelerators: Pre-configured templates and data models tailored to specific industries, including high-tech, manufacturing, telecommunications, and retail, to speed up CDP implementation.
- Oracle Analytics Cloud Integration: This feature offers advanced data visualisations, enabling businesses to make more informed decisions based on a comprehensive view of their data.
Speaking about the enhancements, Rob Pinkerton, Oracle’s Senior Vice President, highlighted the significance of the Account Profile Explorer in bridging the gap between sales and marketing: “In large organisations, sales teams often don’t know who marketing is targeting, and vice versa. Account Profile Explorer brings these teams together, allowing them to focus their efforts on the most valuable opportunities, and even include product teams in the process.”
Fusion of Front- and Back-End Data
One of the standout developments is the inclusion of back-office data in Oracle’s CDP, something Pinkerton believes sets Oracle apart from its competitors. While other companies are beginning to integrate similar capabilities, Oracle’s enterprise-scale approach offers a deeper, more comprehensive view of the customer, incorporating data from areas such as finance, contracts, and supply chain.
Pinkerton emphasised Oracle’s unique position in serving large-scale enterprises: “Our customers are some of the biggest, most complex providers in their industries, many of which the general public may never have heard of. But they’re the ones driving critical infrastructure and manufacturing.”
Streamlining B2B Buying and Selling
Oracle also introduced a new solution within its Fusion Cloud CX suite that provides B2B buying and selling teams with a collaborative view of commercial relationships. This feature allows teams to access quotes, orders, account profiles, subscriptions, renewals, and assets, with the added benefit of connecting customer and financial data. The goal is to streamline go-to-market strategies, including recurring and consumption-based revenue models.
Additionally, enhancements to Oracle’s revenue transformation solutions include:
- Unified CPQ, Contracts, and Order Management: Aims to simplify complex sales agreements.
- Generative AI for Contract Summarisation: Reduces contract processing time and assists with contract-related queries.
- Generative AI for Sellers: Helps automate tasks such as drafting emails, creating executive briefings, and summarising CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) data.
Maintaining a Focus on B2C
Despite the B2B focus of these announcements, Pinkerton assured that Oracle remains committed to its B2C customers as well. Products like Responsys, which is integrated with Unity CDP, continue to support first-party data strategies, helping businesses reduce reliance on third-party data and better understand their customer behaviour.
“We’re still heavily invested in B2C, and the integration of Unity with Responsys helps companies unlock more value from their existing customers,” Pinkerton said. “It’s all about understanding how they respond to your products, integrating that data, and making smarter decisions.”
Why It Matters
Oracle’s enhancements to Unity CDP come at a crucial time for businesses looking to optimise their use of customer data, especially in a subscription-driven economy. By integrating back-office data with traditional sales and marketing insights, Oracle offers companies a more holistic view of customer relationships, which is essential for driving growth and efficiency in B2B settings.
While competitors like SAP are also moving towards incorporating back-office data, Oracle’s deep-rooted enterprise solutions give it an edge in serving large-scale businesses. Oracle Unity’s composable structure, which works in tandem with Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse, allows organisations to tap into vast amounts of back-office data, setting the stage for more sophisticated AI-driven insights and decision-making.
As AI continues to reshape the business landscape, these enhancements to Oracle Unity CDP aim to put businesses in a stronger position to maximise the value of their customer data, streamline operations, and drive meaningful engagement with their customers.
Reference: https://martech.org/oracle-enhances-its-unity-cdp-offering/
