>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube, covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017, brought to you by Oracle. (dynamic music) >> John: Hey, welcome back everyone, we're here live. Day two coverage of Oracle's Modern CX Modern Customer Experience #ModernCX. Also check out all the great coverage here on The Cube, but also on the web, a lot of great stories and one of the people behind all that is Des Cahill, who's joining Peter Burris and myself. Kicking off day two, Des, great to see you, Head of Customer Experience Evangelist, involved in a lot of the formation and really the simplification of the messaging across Cloud, so it's really one story. >> Yeah, absolutely, so John, Peter, great to be here. You know, I think the real story is about our customers and businesses that are going through transformation. So everything that we're doing at Oracle, in our CX organizations, helping these organizations make their digital business transformation and the reason they're going through this transformative process is to meet the demands of their customers. I'd say it's the era of the empowered customer. They're empowered by social, mobile, Cloud technologies and all of us in our daily lives can relate to the fact that over the last five, 10 years, the way that we buy, our journey as we buy products, as we do research, is completely different, than it used to be, right. >> Talk about the evolution, talk about the evolution of what's happening this week, because I think this is kind of a mark in time, at least from our observation, covering Oracle, this is our eighth year and certainly second year with the modern marketing experience now, >> Des: Yeah. >> the modern customer experience, where the feedback in the floor, and this is noteworthy, is that the quality is great, people at the booth are highly qualified, but it's simple. It's one fabric of messaging, one fabric of product. It feels like a platform, >> Yeah. >> and is that by design (laughs) or is that kind of the next step in the evolution of, >> Des: Yeah, John. >> Marketing Cloud meets Real Cloud and? >> Yeah, yeah, so absolutely John. I mean that, that is by design and again, to support our customers and their needs on this digital business transformation journey, it starts obviously with fantastic marketing, we've just got fantastic capabilities within our Marketing Cloud, but then that extends to Sales Cloud. If you generate leads in marketing and you're not handing them over to sales effectively or of a good sales automation engine and that goes on to commerce, CPQ, social, and service. And all of this, if we bring this back down to again, this notion of the empowered customer, if you're not providing those customers with connected experiences across marketing, sales, service, commerce, you're not... you're going to, you might lose those customers. I mean, we expect connected experiences across our whole journey. If I'm calling my cell phone provider, 'cause I got a problem, I don't, and I don't want to call one person, get transferred to another person and then go to the website to chat with someone, have a disconnected experience. I want them to, when I call, I want them to understand my history, my status as a customer, I'm spending 500 dollars a month on them, the problems I've had before. I want them to have context and to know me in that moment and as Mark Hertz says, it's like a moment of truth with my cell phone provider. Are they going to delight me and turn me into a customer advocate, or am I going to leave and go to another cell phone provider? >> Well let's talk just for a second, and I want to get your comments on this and how it relates specifically to what we're saying here. Digital has two enormous impacts. One, as you said, that a customer can take their research activities with them, on their cell phone. >> Yeah. They have learned, because of commerce and electronic commerce, they've learn to expect and demand a certain style of engagement >> Des: Right. >> and that's not going to change, so if you are not doing those things-- >> We like to say Amazon is the new benchmark, either B to C or B to B, it doesn't matter, right. >> It is a benchmark, at least on the commerce side, so it's, so that's one change, is that customers are empowered. The second big change though, is that increasingly, digital allows people to render products more as services and that's in many respects, what the Cloud's all about. >> Des: Right. >> How do you take an asset, that is a machine and render it as a service to someone? Well now we can actually use digital technologies to render things more as services. The combination of those two things are incredibly powerful, because customers, who now have the power to evaluate and change decisions all the time are now constantly making decisions, because it's a pay-as-you-go service world now. >> Des: Right. >> So how do those two things come together and inform the role, that marketing is going to play inside a business, 'cause increasingly, it seems to us that marketing is going to have to own that continuous, ongoing engagement and deliver that consistent value, so a customer does not leave, 'cause you have more opportunities to leave now. >> Well, I, so I think that's a good observation, Peter. I do think that marketers can play, and do play, a leading role in being the advocate for the customer within the brand, within the company and as a marketer myself, I think about not just the marketing function, but I think about, well, what is the experience, that that lead or that prospect going to have when I hand over to sales? And what is the experience that they are going to have, when I hand them over to service? And in my past roles as a CMO, the challenge I always faced was that I couldn't get information out of the sales automation system or out of the service automation system, so as a marketer, I couldn't optimize my marketing mix and I didn't have visibility on which opportunities I passed, which leads I passed over turned into the best opportunities, turned into the best deals, turned into the customers, that were most loyal, that got cross-sold and up-sold and were the happiest. So I think, going back to Oracle's strategy in all of this, it's about having a connected, end-to-end suite of Cloud applications, so that there's a consistent set of data, that is enabling these consistent, personalized, and immediate experiences. >> I think that's interesting and I want to just validate that, because I think, that is to me, the big sign that I think you guys are on the right track and executing and by the way, some of the things you're talking about used to be the holy grail, they're actually real now. >> Des: Right. >> The dynamic is the silos are a symptom of a digital-analog relationship. >> Des: Right. >> So when you have all digital, the moment of truth starts here, it's all digital. So in that paradigm, end-to-end wins. And at Mobile World Congress this year, one of the main themes when they talk about 5G, and all these things, that were going on, was you know, autonomous vehicles, (laughs) media entertainment, smart cities, a smart home, you know, talk to things. To your point, that's an end-to-end, so the entire world wants-- >> Des: Throw IoT in there. >> Throw IoT, >> Right. >> So again, these digital connections are all connected, so therefore, it is essentially an end-to-end opportunity. So whoever can optimize that end-to-end, while being open, while having access to the data, >> Des: Right. >> will be the winning formula. >> Des: Right. >> And that is something that we see and you obviously have that. >> And then the other piece is how do you actualize that data? Right, and I know you spoke with Jack Berkowitz about adaptive intelligent apps, it's, we're taking approach to artificial intelligence of saying, how can we bring to bear the power of machine learning, dynamic decision science, so that all this data, that's being collected and enabled by all these digital touch points, these digital signals, how do you take that data and how do you actualize that, 'cause the reality is, 80% of data that's collected today is dark, it's untouched, it's just collected, right. >> Well, here is the hard question for you, you know I am going to ask this, so I am going to ask it, here's the hard question. >> Des: Yeah. >> It really comes down to the data, and if you don't, you, connected networks and all that good stuff is great fabric, end-to-end. >> Des: Absolutely, yeah. >> This is certainly the future, it's the new normal, it's coming fast. >> Right. >> But at the end of the day, the conversation we've been having here is about the data. >> Des: Yes. >> What is your position with Oracle on connecting that data, 'cause that ultimately is what needs to flow. >> Des: Right. >> How does that work? Can you just take a minute to >> Sure, sure. >> to address that, how the data flows? >> Yeah, I think it starts with our end-to-end connected applications, that are able, that are connected with each other natively and are sharing that same data set. We obviously recognize that customers have mixed environments, so in those cases, we can certainly use our technologies to connect to their existing data stores, to synchronize with their existing systems, so it all starts with the cleanliness and quality of that baseline customer data. The second piece I'd say, is that we've made a lot of investments over the last five years in Oracle Data Cloud and Oracle Data Cloud is a set of anonymized, third party data. We've got 5 billion consumer IDs, we've got a billion business IDs. We've got a tremendous amount of data sources. We just announced a recent acquisition of a company called Moat, last week at our Oracle Data Cloud Summit in New York City. So we've made a tremendous investment in third party data, that can augment anonymized third party data, that can augment first party data, to allow people to have not just a connected view of the customer, but more of a comprehensive view and understanding of their customers, so that they can better talk to them and get them better experiences. >> That's the key there, that we're hearing with this intelligent, adaptive intelligent app kind of environment, >> Yeah, yeah. >> where machine learning. The third party data integrating within the first party data, that seems to be the key. Is that right, >> Absolutely. >> did I get that right? >> Yeah, well I would say there's a number of points, so I would say that, that, you know, you can think of the Oracle Data Cloud combining with the BlueKai DMP and being a great ad-tech business for us and a great solution for digital marketers in and of itself. What we've done with adaptive intelligent apps is that we've combined that third party data with decision science machine learning AI and we've coupled that with the Oracle Cloud infrastructure and the scale and power of that. So we're able to deliver real-time, adaptive learning and dynamic offers and content at 130 millisecond clips. So this is real-time interaction, so we are getting signals every time someone clicks, it's not a batch mode, one-off kind of thing. The third piece is that we have designed these, designed these apps to just embed natively, to plug into our existing CX applications. So if you're a marketer, you're a service professional, you're a sales professional, you can get value out of this day one. You've got a tremendous data set. You've got real-time, adaptive artificial intelligence and it plugs right into your existing apps. It's a win-win. Take your first party data, take your third party data, combine it together, put some decision science on there, some high bandwidth, incredible scale infrastructure and you're getting, you're starting to get to one-to-one marketing. You're freeing your marketing teams from being data analysts and segmenting and trying to get insight and you're letting the machine do that work and you're freeing up, you're freeing up your human capital to be thinking about higher-level tasks, about offers and merchandising and creative and campaigns and channels. >> Well, the way we think about it, Des, and I'll test you on this, is we think ultimately the machines are going to offer options. So they're going to do triage on a lot of this data >> Des: Right, right. >> and offer options to human decision-makers. Some of the discretions, we see three levels of interaction, >> Des: Yeah. >> Automated interaction, which, quite frankly, we're doing a lot of that today in finance systems. >> Des: Yes. >> But then we get to autonomous vehicles, highly deterministic networks, highly deterministic behaviors, >> Des: Right. >> that's what's going to be required in autonomy. No uncertainty. Where we have environmental uncertainty, i.e. that temperature's going to change or I, some IoT things are going to change, that's where we see the idea of turning the data and actuating it in the context of that environmental uncertainty. >> Des: Right. >> We think that this is all going to have an impact on the human side, what we call systems of augmentation, >> Des: Right. >> where the system's going to provide options to a human decision-maker, the discretion stays with the human decision-maker, culpability stays with the human decision-maker, >> Des: Right. >> but the quality of the options determine the value of the systems. >> So the augmentation is-- >> The augmentation's great. >> So let me give you a great example of that with AIA. So, take for example, you're a pro photographer and you got a big shoot the next day and your camera, your main camera you bought three months ago, it breaks. And you buy all your stuff at photog.com and you call 'em up and what could happen today? "Hi, what's your account number? "Who are you? "Wait, let me look you up, OK. "I'm sorry, I'm not authorized to get you a return." You know, boom, and the person's like, "I'm never going to buy from them again." Right, it's that moment of truth. Contrast that with a, 'cause the person making that decision, if it was the CEO getting that call, the CEO would be like, "We're going to get you a camera immediately." But that person that they're talking to is five levels down in a call center, Bismarck, North Dakota. If that person had AI, adaptive intelligent apps helping them out, then the AI would do the work in the background of analyzing the customer's lifetime value, their social reach, so their indirect lifetime value. It would look at their customer health, how many other services issues, that they have. It would look at, are there any warranty issues or known service failure issues on that camera and then it would look at a list of stores, that were within a five mile radius of that customer, that had those cameras in stock. And it would authorize an immediate pickup and you're on your way. It would just inform that person and enable them to make that decision. >> Even more than that, and this is a crucially important point, that we think people don't get when they talk about a lot of this stuff. These systems have to deliver not only data, but also authority. >> Exactly. The authority has to flow with the data. >> Des: Right. >> That's one of the advantages-- >> On both sides, by the way, on the identity and-- >> On both sides. >> And I think that employee wants that empowerment. >> Absolutely. >> No one wants to take a call and not make the customer happy, right. >> Peter: Absolutely, >> Yeah. >> because that's a challenge with some of the bolt-on approaches to some of these big applications, is that, yeah, >> Exactly. >> you can deliver a result, but then how is the result >> How is it manifested? >> integrated into the process >> Right. >> that defines and affords authority to actually make the decision? >> OK, so let's see, where are we on the progress bar then. because we had a great interview yesterday with the CMO from Time Warner. >> Yeah. >> OK, Kristen O'Hara, she was amazing. But basically, there was no old way of doing data, they were Time Warner, (laughs) they're old school media and they set up a project, you guys came in, Oracle came in, and essentially got them up and running, and it's changed their business practice overnight. >> Des: Right, right. >> So, and the other thing we heard yesterday was a lot of the stuff that was holy grail-like capabilities is actually being delivered. So give us a slice-and-dice what's shipping today, that's, that's hot and where's the work area that's road-mapped for Oracle? >> Sure, well-- >> And were you guys helping customers? >> Sure, I'll talk about a couple of examples, where we're helping customers. So, Denon and Marantz, high end audio company, brand's been around 100 years. The way music is delivered, is consumed, has changed radically in the last 20 years, changed radically in the last 10 years, changed even more radically in the last five years, so they've had to change their business model to keep up with that. They are embedding Oracle IoT Cloud into every product they sell, except their headphones, so all their speakers, all their AV receivers and they are using IoT data and Oracle Service Cloud to inform, not only service issues, like for example, they are, they're detecting failures pro-actively and they're shipping out new speakers, before they fail or they're pushing firmware to fix the problem, before it happens. They're not only using it to inform their service, they're using it to inform their R&D and their sales and marketing. Great example, they ship wireless speakers, HEOS wireless speakers, highly recommend 'em, I bought 'em for my kids for Christmas, they're the bomb. But customers were starting to... They were getting a lot of failures in these wireless speakers. They looked up the customer data, then they looked up the IoT data. They found that 80% of the speaker failures, the products were labeled Bathroom as location in the configuration of their home network setup and what they realized was that customers were listening to music in the bathroom, which is a use case they never thought of and the speakers weren't made to be water or humidity-proof, so they went to the R&D department, 14 months later, they ship a line of waterproof HEOS speakers. The second thing is they found people, who were labeling their speakers, Patio, they were using it on the patio, they didn't even have a rechargeable battery on it, so they came out with a line with a rechargeable battery on it. So they're not only using IoT data, for a machine maintenance function, >> John: 'cause they were behaving-- >> they're using IoT data to inform, inform R&D and they're also doing incredible marketing and sales activities. We had Don Freeman, the CMO of Denon on the main stage yesterday, talking about this great, great stuff they're doing. >> And what's the coolest thing this week, that you're looking at, you're proud of or excited about? >> I'm excited about a lot of stuff, John. This week is realized, you alluded to this week has been really, really fun, really great, a lot of buzz, obviously a lot of buzz around adaptive, intelligent apps and we've talked about that. But I would say also beyond a doubt, that intelligent apps for CX, we've introduced some great things in our Service Cloud, the capability to have a video chat, so Pella Windows was also on one of our panels today and they were talking about the ability for, to solve a service issue, the ability to show a video of what's going on, just increases the speed with which something can be diagnosed so much faster. We're integrating on the Service Cloud, we're integrating with WeChat and we're integrating with Facebook Messenger. Now, why would you do that? Well again, it comes back to this era of the empowered consumer. It's not enough that a company just has a website or an 0800 number that you can go to for support. Consumers are spending more time in social messaging apps, than they are on social messaging sites, so if the consumer wants to be served on Facebook Messenger, 'cause they spend their time on it, the brand has to meet them there. >> John: Yeah. >> The third thing would be the ability for the Marketing Cloud and Service and Sales Cloud, we've got chat bots, voice-driven, text-driven, AI-driven, so mobile assistant for the sales professionals, so you can input data on the road, "Hey, open an account, here's the data "for the transaction here what's going on." >> John: Yeah. >> Incredible, incredible stuff going on all over the stack. >> I think the thing, that excites me, is I look at the videos from last year and the theme was, "Man, you guys have "all these awesome acquisitions," >> Des: Right. >> "But you have this opportunity with the data," and you guys knew that and you guys tightened that together and doubled down on the data >> Des: Yeah, with banking, yeah-- >> and so I thought that was a great job and I like the messenging's clean, I think but more importantly is that in any sea change, you know, we joke about this, as we're kind of like historians and we've seen a lot of waves, >> Des: Right, for sure. >> and all these major waves, when the user's expectations shift, that's the opportunity. I think what you guys nailed here is that, and Peter alluded to it as well, is that the users are expecting things differently, completely differently. >> Let me share a stat with you. 50% of the companies that were in the Fortune 500 in the year 2000, are either out of business, acquired, gone, 50% and those companies, >> Dab or die. >> Blockbuster, Borders, did they stay relevant? >> John: Yeah. I think changing business practice based on data is what's happening, it's awesome. Des Cahill, here on The Cube. More live coverage, day two of Modern CX, Modern Customer Experience, #ModernCX. This is The Cube, I'm John Furrier with Peter Burris, we'll be right back. (dynamic music)