>> Host: Live from Las Vegas. It's The Cube! Covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017. (electronic music) Brought to you by Oracle. >> Okay, welcome back everyone, we're here live at the Mandalay Bay for Oracle's Modern CX Show, Modern Customer Experience, this is the Cube, I'm John Furrier. My co-host, Peter Burris, two days of wall-to-wall coverage. Day two, my next guest is Katrina Gosek, Senior Director Commerce Product Strategy, (mumbles) Oracle upper world a few years ago, and Alistair Galbraith Sr, Director of CX, Customer Experience Innovation Lab with Oracle. Welcome to The Cube, great to see you. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, welcome. >> So commerce is part of the story, it's just not marketing, there's transactions involved, there's R & D, there's a lot of technology. The show here is the common theme of just modernizing the customer experience, which is good, because it's the outcomes. But commerce is one of them. Give us the update, what's hot for you guys this week? >> Yeah, I think what's different this year, from any other year in the past is the pace of innovation is changing, because I think there's so much disruption in the commerce space, and particularly in retail and also B to B commerce. There's lots of new expectations from customers. I know we've been saying that for years, right? But I think the technologies now, that can enable some new experiences, have rapidly changed. Now it's completely fathomable to leverage AI to drive more high-end personalization or to leverage internet of things, to embed commerce more into everyday experience. >> John: Where's the innovation in retail? 'Cause retail's not a stranger to data. They've had data models going back, but certainly digital changes things, they're at the edge of the networks, so it's a little bit of internet of things meets consumer data, the data's huge if you can get the identity of the person. That seems to be the key conversation: how do you guys enable that to take advantage of the sea of data that you're providing form the data cloud, third party and first party data? >> Well I think there's a lot of fun approaches. Oracle has a technology called the Oracle ID Graph, which starts to merge a lot of identities across channels, so where customers are using data cloud, that can inform those micro interactions as they move between channels, and I think one of the trends we've been seeing this year that we're talking about as My Channel, is that customers no longer really complete one interaction or one transaction in one place. They might start on mobile, move to voice, move into a physical store, and we're trying to track that customer in all of those places, so a lot of our focus, and you see data cloud moves into AI, is enabling brands to move this data around more easily without needing to know everything about the customer themselves. >> John: Well that's the key for the experience of the customer, because they don't want to have to answer the same questions again if they're on a chat bot, and they've already been at a transaction. Knowing what someone's doing at any given time is good contextual data. >> Alistair: Yep. >> Well it's funny you say that, because when we talk to customers or end consumers, they're not thinking, "I need more artificial intelligence, "I need more data around my experience, "I need internet of things", they're thinking, "I want convenience, I want this to be fast and quick, "I want you to know me as a brand, "I don't want to have to re-enter everything. "If I'm talking to a customer service agent, "versus someone in the store, versus interacting online". So data's a huge part of that, the challenge is how do you make it consistent? >> John: Katrina has a great point: it's not the technology, it's about what they're trying to do. >> Katrina: Yeah, exactly, very much. >> Well the experience comes back to, in many respects, convenience, and, "I want you to sustain "the state of where I am in my journey for me". >> Katrina: Correct, yeah. >> Or at least not blow my state up. So it's interesting, the journey used to be a role or a context thing, and now we're adding physical location to it, as well as device. So go back to this notion of new experiences. 'Cause it's got to be more than, you can look at something on your phone and then transact on your phone. What are some of the new experiences on the horizon? 'Cause that is a lot to do with where you guys think digital technology's going to go. >> I think some of those experiences are micro-interactions, so that could be people are using voice shopping, but not for the entire purchase, just a re-order this thing, what's the status of this thing? And brands are also using the data that they're gathering to tweak and adjust those interactions. So we're seeing data coming from real world devices and IOT changing the expectation of the customer, as they, maybe, we showed some stories where people are re-ordering products using voice, and then when they shift between these channels, that micro piece of data is really changing that interaction. The other challenge we're seeing is the consistency of the interaction, you said yourself, not only it's the complexity of "what did I do?", but if I do something here and I do something here, I should get the same experience both times. >> So we're talking mostly at this point about the B to C, the consumer world. In many respects, some of the most interesting experiences, we can envisage in the B to B world, where a community of sellers is selling to a community of buyers, and the state that's really important is how does that buying community interact with each other? As they discover things and share information. So how do you see this notion of new experiences starting to manifest itself in the B to B world? >> Katrina: Yeah, it's interesting you say that, because I often, we work with both B to C and B to B clients, and I actually think B to B has always been more focused on personalization, because they do have so much information about their customers, contract data, a lot of information about the buyer, the companies, they've always done kind of online custom personalized catalogs. So I think there's a lot that B to C can learn from B to B about how to leverage that data to personalize experiences. >> John: And vice-versa too, it's interesting, to that point, the B to C is a leading indicator on the experience side, but B to B's got the blocking and tackling down, if they have the data. 'Cause having the data, you get the goods. Okay, so here's the question for you: with the consumers going to digital, you're seeing massive, we were reporting yesterday, here on The Cube and also on siliconhill.com, as well as Adage, not that we didn't predict this, but ad spend now on digital has surpassed TV for the first time. Which is an indicator, but the ad tech world's changing, because how people are engaging with the customer is changing, so the question is, what technology is going to help transition those ad dollars, from banner ads to older formats to something more compelling and using data? 'Cause you can imagine retail being less about click, buy, to sharing data. So the spend's going to only grow on advertising or reaching consumers. That conversion, that experience is going to have to move from direct response clicking, to more experience, what tech is out there? >> Well, I think the biggest challenge has always been tracking and personalizing for a unique interaction. Just the sheer volume of data that's coming in, it's just too hard to consume. So I think the blend of AI and AI with the ability to tweak, adjust, look at multi-variate tests, and change the interaction as it goes, that's going to really massively affect the journeys for retailers, and I think the big benefit as brands move to the cloud, the cost of innovation, the cost of trying something and failing is so much less, and the pace of innovation is so much faster, I think we're seeing people try new things with the data they've got. Find out what works and what doesn't. >> Here's a question for you guys. We're talking to Jess Cahill, when this came up yesterday as well, Peter brought this up as part of the big data action going on with the AI and whatnot. Batch to real time is a shift, and this is clear here in the show that the batch is there, but still an older, but real time data in motion consumers in motion are out there, so the real time is now the key. Can you comment on that? >> I think it goes back to what Alistair was saying earlier about those micro-moments. I think transacting in new and unexpected places, ways, I think that's the key, and that's actually a huge challenge for our customers, because you have to be able to use that data in real time, because that customer is standing there with their phone, or in front of Alexa, or a speaker. >> John: It's an opportunity. >> It's a huge opportunity, and I think those opportunities are everywhere now. In a couple of years be the refrigerator, if you're re-ordering groceries, leveraging the screen, so I think that's going to be the challenge, but I think we've got time to help our customers figure out how to leverage that in real time. I think staying nimble and agile is going to be key and failing fast, and I guess a more positive way to say this-- >> The Agile Marketer, I think we had Roland Smart on yesterday, he literally wrote the book. But this is interesting, if you have the data, you can do these kinds of things. So the question is, certainly your point about the refrigerator and all these different things is going to create the omni-channel nightmare. It's not going to be, certainly multi-multi-omni. It's going to be too many challenges to deal with. >> Alistair: I think we prefer to see it as the omni-channel dream, than the nightmare. (group laughs) >> So many channels, there's no more channels, right? >> Well I think that's where things like Marketing Cloud, things like Integration Cloud help orchestrate that omni-channel journey, so that to your point on marketing and ad-spend, being able to analyze whether a benefit or promotion I showed during one micro-interaction affected something somewhere else, is so challenging but so important when you're moving this ad spend around. And I think where orchestrating and joining these micro-moments together, it's really where we're focusing a lot of our investment at the moment. >> One of the big things that's happening in the industry today is we're starting to develop techniques, and approaches, methods, for conceptualizing how a real thing is turned into a digital representation. IBM calls and not to mention them, or GE, perhaps more of a customer ... (group laughs) Yeah, I just did. >> That's all right. >> This notion of a digital twin. Commerce succeeds, where online electronic commerce succeeds as we are more successful at representing goods and services digitally. What's the relationship between IOT and some of these techniques for manifesting things digitally? And commerce, because commerce can expand its portfolio, things it can cover, as more of these things can be successfully digitally represented? >> I think that's key, and that's actually one of the predictions that we talked about in our keynote is how do you represent new ways of representing the physical store, the physical space with customers, so for me, I think something that probably Back to the Future or Judy Jetson, like a few years ago, augmented reality, or virtual reality, I think now we're going to see that more. We're starting to see it more with furniture sales, for example, you're on your iPad at home, and you can put the couch you've chosen in the space, right there with you, and see if it fits, but you're in your home, you don't have to go to the furniture store, and kind of guess with your tape measure whether the couch fits or not. And I think that's applicable in B to B as well, as 3D CAD drawings, you can kind of see them in VR, or AR. >> Amazon just announced Look, yesterday, which is the selfie tool that allows you to see what you're wearing. >> I think we're going to see a lot more of it in the coming years. >> Well, in many respects, it also, going back to this, we asked the question earlier about B to B, B to C, and the ability to represent that community. We're going to start seeing more of a household approach, as to just a consumer approach, and I think you just mentioned a great one. When we are successfully, or when we are willing to start capturing more data about our physical house or what's going on inside, so that we can make more informed decisions, with others, about how we want to do things, has an enormous impact on the quality of the experience, and where people are going to go to make their purchases. >> Alistair: Definitely, and I think that as we try and merge those experiences between B to B and B to C, what we know about someone as a consumer also directly affects their buying decisions, as a B to B employee buying for their brand. And that just increases the sheer volume of data that people are trying to manage and test and orchestrate. I think we're seeing a shift not only in people being prepared to surrender some degree of privacy for a increased experience, but we're also seeing people trusting in that virtual experience being a reality when they buy. So people have a much higher trust level in AR, if I visualize a couch and then buy it, I've got a degree of faith that when it turns up, it'll be like the one I looked at. And I think that increased trust is really making virtual experiences, digital commerce, so much easier. >> I think that's an interesting point, we had CMO of Time Warner on yesterday, Kristen O'Hara, and she was, we asked her, "Oh yeah, these transformations", big use case, she's on stage, but I asked her, "How was it like the old way? "What would you do before Oracle?", she goes, "Well, there was no old way", they never did. The point is, she said, the point was we became a direct to consumer company, so B to B and B to C are completely merging. So now the B to B's have to be a B to C, inherently because of the direct connect to the consumer. Not saying that their business model's changing, just that's the way the consumer is impacting. >> Peter: Or is it data connection to a consumer? >> A data connection, and where there's gesture data, or interaction data coming in, so this makes, the B to Bs now have to bolt on more stuff, like loyalty, you mentioned loyalty, things of that nature. >> Yeah, if you're a B to B company, you're selling to other businesses, but who are the people on the other business? There are people who shop every day in consumer applications, so their expectations are, "I'm going to have a great personalized experience, "I'm going to be able to leverage the same tools "that I see in my consumer shopping experiences "for my B to B experience, why would it be different?" So I think that's something that B to B is really learning from B to C as well. >> True, but although there seems to be something of a counter-veiling trend, but an increasing number of people are now working at home. So in many respects, where we're going to, is we're talking about experience, not just being online. One of my little heroes, when I was actually trying to do development, a million years ago, was Christopher Alexander. The Timeless Way of Building, which was one of the basic texts that people use for a lot of this customer experience stuff, and the observation that he made was, you talk about spaces, you talk about people moving into spaces to do things in context. And increasingly, the spaces that we have to worry about are not just what's on the screen, but the physical space that people move in, and operate in, an the idea is, I'm going somewhere to do something, and I'm bringing physical space with me. So all of these, the ability to represent space, time and interests and wants and needs, are going to have an enormous impact on experience. Wouldn't you agree? >> Massively, and I think the challenge using that same approach is that people are co-existing in multiple spaces concurrently. They no longer do one thing at the same time. >> Peter: They may be in the same physical place, but have two different contexts associated with it. Like working my home office, I'm both a father, as well as an employee. >> Alistair: Yes. >> And those two sometimes conflict. (Katrina laughs) >> Yeah, absolutely, and you're a consumer and an employee, and as a father, you're potentially affecting the decisions that the rest of your household is making, as well as the decisions that your business is making, all in slightly different ways. But those two experiences with the B to B and B to C, overlap one another. >> Peter: In fact, switching contexts from consumer to father is one of the primary reasons why I lose where I am in the journey. So these are very powerful, and the ability to have the data and then go to your customers, and say, "We will be able to provide that end to end for you, "so that you can provide a consistent "and coherent experience for your customers" is really crucial. Is that kind of where you're taking us? >> Yeah, I mean we've always commerce isn't kind of a standalone little thing, it really connects and glues together so many other types of experiences, so it connects to marketing, it connects to service, you need all of that, to be able to make the experience work. So we're really focused on making sure that it's easy to connect those applications together, that its easy to manage them behind the scenes, and that it appears seamless to the customer on the front end. >> One other thought that I have is, and in many respects, increasingly, because we're going to be able to represent more things digitally, which means we'll be able to move more stuff through commerce platforms. This is where the CX is going to meet the customer road, is in the commerce platforms. Do you guys agree with that? You're going to measure things all over the place, but I'm just curious-- >> John: It's their products, yeah. >> What do you think? Is it going to be increasingly the basis for honest CX? >> Well we're already seeing it become the basis, so I wouldn't say it's a future thing, I think it's been a reality for quite some time, where commerce is the hub that kind of connects, in retail, the store to marketing experiences. >> John: It's bonafide data is what it is too. >> Yeah. >> That's good data. >> Katrina: It holds so much product information, transaction information, customer information, and it just connects and leverages. I don't know if you would agree? >> Alistair: I would agree completely, and I think you look at the fact that most companies ultimately are selling a product, so that's commerce, and I think the transition is that rather than going into the commerce site or the commerce space, you see a lot of brands over the last 12 months have got rid of their store.brand.com thing and just merged their commerce experience into everything else, you're always selling. And we've customers deploy commerce without the cart, but as a product and communication marketing model, to get this tracking data moving around. >> We were talking about Jack earlier, yesterday, Berkowitz, who was talking data, we were talking about data, good data, dirty data, clean data, and data quality in general. >> Katrina: It's a tough problem. >> In context to value, and he said a quote, he said, "Good data makes things happen, "great data makes amazing things happen". And to your point, retail, commerce data, you can't, it's undisputed, it's a transaction. It's a capture in time, and that can be used in context to help other data sets become more robust. >> Well, in many respects it's the most important first person data that you have in your business. >> Katrina: Yeah, and I think from an Oracle perspective, what we're doing with the adaptive intelligent applications for commerce, and for the other applications as well, and particular for commerce is combing that first hand information you have about your products and your customers as an online business, but then the immense amount of data that the data cloud has behind the scenes that augments and allows you to automatically personalize, when a customer comes to your storefront, because they're coming already with all the context that they have elsewhere out in the world, and you can combine that with your own data, and I think really enhance the experience. >> John: Yeah it's funny, we were joking yesterday, Oracle went to bed a software company, woke up a data company. >> Katrina: Yeah (laughs). >> So the data cloud is pretty impressive, what's happened there and what that's doing. >> Katrina: It's amazing, it's a huge differentiator for us. >> Huge differentiator. Okay, final word, I'd like both you guys to just quickly comment to end this segment, awesome segment on commerce and data, which we love. But your reaction to the show, what's the bottom line, what's exciting you this week? Share with the folks, each of you, a quick soundbite of what's happening here and the impact people should know about. >> Sure from a commerce perspective, this is the first year where we've got a 50/50 split in our customer base, so we're seeing a lot of our un-premise customers move to cloud, which is great, and we're really growing our commerce cloud customer base. I'm very excited about that. >> And you're trying to get 100% now, it's never going to be a hundred. >> Katrina: (laughs) Yeah, we need to work with customers and what's right for them, but yeah, it's very exciting right now. >> Alistair, your take? >> I think for me, it's just the sheer pace of innovation, we're seeing brands go from un-premised stories that would take 12, 15, 18 months to add new features, make changes to small nimble brands rolling out incredible innovative features in 12, 18 week time frames, and we're seeing more people having more discussions around the art of the possible. >> John: All right, Katrina, Alistair, great comment, great insight, great conversation about data and commerce, of course cloud, it's the marketing clouds, all cloud world, it's commerce cloud, it's data cloud, it's just the cloud (laughs). I'm John Furrier, Peter Burris, move live coverage here from Las Vegas, Oracle Modern CX after this short break. (electronic music) >> Host: Robert--