 Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering Oracle's modern marketing experience. Brought to you by Oracle. Now, here's your hosts, John Furrier and Jeff Frick. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Las Vegas for Oracle Modern Experience. This is theCUBE, SiliconANGLE's flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier with my co-host, Jeff Frick. Our next guest is Catherine Blackmore, GVP of Customer Success at Oracle Marketing Cloud known as OMC. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, great to be here. Well, welcome. Welcome, glad to have you. I know you're super busy. Thanks for spending the time to come on. You're heavily involved in all the customer successes. And Kevin Ackerroy was on earlier and he's like, the theme this year is keeping it real because he was talking about the promises that others make and the hype and the vaporware. And also some critical analysis that Oracle got over the years around being, you know, this acquisition portfolio, different piece parts, but the investment of integrating it all together really has been a great milestone success. So you talk about this in your keynote. Share with us some of the highlights. Did he mention that I'm the chief promise keeper? Oh, there you go. No, I didn't say that, but that's a good, well. Because that is really the focus here. No, it was great. We, to talk about what we shared on stage and what really I've been focused on since I've joined the OMC, it has been around how can we take the brilliance of what Kevin has truly put together for all of us, all of our customers, our partners in terms of this center of gravity from a marketing perspective. And that's amazing. And I know we had incredible product keynotes to really describe where the product is headed around integrating all these amazing companies now coming together to form the OMC. But my work is really around how do we take the team that's enabling the success of our customers to become one. And that truly, you know, is very meta, where we talk about- Team within Oracle, like a different portfolio. Yeah, team within Oracle, that's exactly right. So you think about, you know, the companies we've acquired, whether it's, you know, Responses, Eloqua, Bluekai, Compendium, Maximizer, those are five different companies, as we all know, that have five different customer management strategies. And cultures. And cultures, and that is huge. And culture is probably the most important piece to be looking at. So knowing that took a lot of time when I first joined to talk to our customers and find out, well, what are you really looking for in an organization to help you be successful? They're saying, you know, it's hard enough, you know, that you guys are this big company, but I don't want to talk to five people in just the OMC, that just, you got to make it simple for me. And at the same time, I want that person who's going to talk to me, really understands my business and understands what I've purchased. And so, you know, the tall task, the tall order, is how do you bring these five companies together, bring it into one success offering, keep it simple for customers, and help them transform from a marketing perspective, really help enable their journey. Because they take us through the progress bar of where you are in that. So, obviously it's a daunting task if you think about it. Because, you know, integration is where M&A succeeds or fails, and Oracle has had a good track record with M&A, so it's not like they don't have that. EMC also has a great track record. We've talked to those guys. And there's a formula to it. You leave them alone for a while, let them keep their groove swing. At some point, they have to get integrated into the operations. That's where things can get dicey. Take us through that. What happened? You have to have a framework. I mean, first and foremost. And I know that this isn't, you know, any consultancy firm would tell you that. And that's something that I've certainly done in my professional past as well. You have to have a framework. And in the arena of customer success, it is truly formed around what this team is really going to do to help the customer. What is your customer promise? What is your customer charter? So, you mentioned culture. To bring these five different companies together became really around what is the purpose of Oracle Marketing Cloud customer success. What do we want to wake up every day to go do? And we got our leaders in the room. And it was an amazing exercise. We really whiteboarded all the things that made us great as separate companies in terms of our customer culture, but brought it into one. And so, you know, coming together. Do you feel that's unified at this point? You know, it's a starting point. You know, it is certainly that marker of declaring it and deliberating every single word that would go into that. But now it's about making it real. Now it's about aligning the people that are going to support that promise. The operations around it. How we train people. How we talk every day. How we even put it on our business card and show the customer what we're here to do. Well, our last guest, Ron, was a partner with Oracle Marketing Cloud exclusively. He came in from Eloqua relationship. Yes. And grew across the portfolio. That's pretty impressive. So that's obviously working at some level. Where's the hotspots for you guys right now? What's the focus area now in terms of the integration and all the customer success? Because you got to orchestrate the internal, I don't want to say herding cats because that's been overused so many times. But you got to internally organize, but also you got to go to the customer. Yes. And present a unified front to the customer. Let's go to market. You do. You do. So let me describe a couple of hotspots because I think that's, this is where we're really focusing in on helping keep things simple. But then yet still help with the deep product expertise that our customers want. And so this concept of a customer success manager, I had a bunch of questions around this when I talked to folks after the keynote. And there's a lot of different names for it. I mean, certainly centering on one title, customer success manager, what does that mean? Well, you could joke, well, this is really your one throat to choke. It's your one person to go to. That helps keep it simple. But this individual really has to understand what the customer wants to accomplish. What is ultimately their business goals? What are those KPIs that are going to measure our success together? And then what is the understanding of the full stack of Oracle Marketing Cloud that I can then have really important business dialogue around how you're going to help go there? So I have to help you charter your customer success path in terms of your adoption path, but then champion other resources around how you're going to actually help that customer transform. So that's one. But then in addition to that, what I also talked about at the keynote is that we have a team of individuals that are so deep. These are folks that used to be hands-on keyboard marketers, have run marketing organizations, folks that are ad tech specialists. These gurus are the ones that can go very deep into the product and actually consult with customers around how they can identify and recognize new business value. Maybe go to a partner from there and being able to augment what they've already implemented or even turn to our open services team and help them realize even greater value. So it's that transformative journey that our customers are on that's certainly spearheaded by the customer success manager, but our adoption advisors, and we've even addressed this with our transformation advisors. You can't even talk to a customer about, hey, it's you, not us, meaning you've got to retire old business ways. We need to be looking at your structure. That's really getting in the way of you ever being able to be successful with technology. Those are all services that are on now. You're talking about advisory to the customer as well. So it's like you've got the expert gurus to go deep under the hood and then advisory on their workflow or work streams. That's exactly right. And I think the key is though, is that this is an opportunity in a moment for our customers to realize where they are, where they need to go and how they're going to get there. They can see the vision, but we're really helping identify a plan. It's not like we're just leaving them on their own to say, well, you know, I'm so glad you bought the full stack. How about it? You know, we want to help you actually be incredibly successful because we are establishing, and this is around our customer promise. We are here to build customers for life. You do not build customers for life if you do not participate in the transformation journey. You touch on so many things there. Where do I begin? So first off, when you talk about integrating the teams, I thought you were going to go down the path of really integrating the Oracle team with the customer team. And Eric from Clorox really talked a lot about the facts of how the teams work together. So that's a whole thing. But when I'm curious to know, how do you define success? What were some of the things that came out on that whiteboard session when as we've discovered, you know, there's so many variables as to where customers are on their journey. And another thing I thought that Eric touched on, which was brilliant. Yes, there's a vision, but you know, we need to talk about things we can execute now. And I think Kevin talked a lot about it and that keynote at the beginning of his key new is so exciting because we're not talking about vision like two years ago. Now we're talking about stuff we can implement for today. So what are some of those kind of macro ways that you and your team define success, customer success so you know you're getting there? Even though you know this is a long journey that there's going to have many, many, many steps along the path. Absolutely, and this is a topic that I've talked a lot about even outside of OMC because I think that there's sometimes this false positive that we get with people that are just incredibly enthusiastic about the brand or even about what the solution can do. And that's a starting point. That's a starting point that certainly builds when you first, you know, customer becomes a customer. But to get to true level of business value and advocacy to where you actually will, like Eric, talk about what you're accomplishing as a business partner or you're walking the business into new areas. Gosh, you know, we've been so successful with this one business unit. Now let's expand and go into new areas. Those are all elements of what we would consider to be a very successful customer. And I know there's a lot of debate around, you know, metrics and optics, do customer success teams use to really demonstrate a customer's getting value? You could say, well, you know, are they adopting the product? Are they live? Are they actually using parts of the product? That's all pieces of that, you know, are we successful? But then I would also argue that you have to really inspect, you know, ultimately, what is the customer's lens? You know, we may be sitting on our side looking at, oh gosh, you know, they're live, they're using a lot of what we've sold them. However, are they getting business value? Are they willing to talk about it? Would they broadcast their success? Those are the conversations we have to have with our customers because it's through that lens that I would truly measure if a customer is successful. Because it's right, it's never the order, it's the reorder, right? I think you really touched on the, you know, the whole lifetime value of the customer. How does your team work with both the Oracle's kind of sales team, the bag carrying guys, and the implementation and delivery teams? Because I'm sure there's a little bit of a healthy conflict there sometimes where your team wants to make sure what they got, they're using, they're getting value. Yes, we want to get into new places. Yes, we want to go to new divisions. Yes, we want to do more, but it's got to make sense. So how does that kind of three-headed thing work? Absolutely, and this is all part of this, our internal transformation journey of how you actually help a customer be successful. This is, you know, beyond the purpose, the battle cry, what we go do, the people, you have to have this operational really layer that programmatically you've got to nail it. You have to know your points of entry. If I'm working with a large customer, when do I get introduced in the sales cycle? Because I know I can really help describe what their journey's going to look like when they become a customer. How do we orchestrate that so that it really makes sense and we understand that rule of engagement that we're talking to each other. And then as we're implementing and going live, I expect that my organization will certainly have a certain expectation with the customer to hold the implementation accountable, know that we're on track, identify any concerns or issues, but it also has to be really well-scripted because there's certainly pieces that our services team have to deliver and they have to own it. They have to be on point to do that work. And then at any other point in time in the journey, there are other actors, there are other roles that have to get integrated, whether it's working with our support organization that's a part of my team, or bringing services back in because we have new areas where the customer wants to develop further. I'm right in your conversation with Mark Herd, when you said, how can you help your customers be transformative if you're not transformative within your own company? And really, you know, you need to basically drink the champagne or- This is the question that we always have and we've been here for two days, we were immersed in, but for the folks that are watching, what is Oracle Marketing Cloud? Because within Oracle, so there's a lot of Oracle customers out there, this is a young organization, kind of Kevin's leadership is pretty clear. You can see where his DNA is impacted. Certainly you've worked them in the past, you've worked with this also Salesforce as well. So this is a growing area. I predicted in my interview with him that this is all going to be massive, but it's the beginning, but it's also within Oracle. So what is the marketing cloud vis-a-vis Oracle? So if I'm a Oracle customer, how do I look at the marketing cloud? Is it a group? Is it all the groups? What's the sales cloud? I heard the CX group, CX thing going on here. What's this? Is it all part of the marketing cloud? Well, that's a very meta conversation because I think if you think about, you know, what does success mean? What does the Oracle Marketing Cloud mean? I think if you're thinking from a customer's lens, they're trying to solve business problems with our solutions. And you can say it extends beyond our internal definition, for sure of how maybe we have our team structured or products aligned. I think from a, if you're really, really taking a customer approach, we have to be thinking from the customer's point of view, selling to a CMO, selling to that CEO, CXO, what are they trying to accomplish from a marketing perspective in terms of driving revenue? Yeah, solutions are outcomes. Exactly, solutions are outcomes. And that certainly can sometimes extend beyond the lines of what we would place into an organizational division, but from a customer promise, what I think about it- It's like big data, what does that mean? Got to go beyond it, yeah. It's like a big data, but I mean in terms of products, marketing cloud has Eloqua, what are some of the brands that are in that? Eloqua, Responses, Compendium, Bluekai, and Maximizer. Okay, all right, good. And then if they want to buy the servers, there's a whole engineered systems group, yes, of which we normally cover at Oracle Open World. Okay, so the marketing cloud, let's just take it forward a little bit. As you guys have been more successful, you're driving a whole new set of experiences for customers, completely different from the old way, the new way. If you were asked, what is the old way and what is the new way of marketing? So old way, email, things like that, and what is modern marketing? If I ask you that definition. It's the modern marketer. The modern marketer. I think that this space is so compelling because modern will be defined differently every year, right? There's new business value, but so inspired, I presented at the Marquis a couple of nights ago, which was an amazing celebration of our customer's success. And the business results that they have achieved with our solutions, with our teams, is truly, truly humbling, if you think about perhaps where they had started and the submissions of what the case studies they've presented and the journeys that they've been on, but I will tell you that that bar is here and it just keeps getting raised because as we continue to grow the stack in terms of what we are building or acquiring, or as our customers are achieving new ways of doing business and business value as our partner ecosystem is growing, I know that you had a conversation earlier today about that. That's going to unlock new capabilities that we aren't even thinking about today. And when I think about a modern marketer, it's a quest to not be status quo. It's a quest to push the envelope. It's a quest to be on the cutting edge. And we would like to think from my customer success organization that we very much want to be on that kind of tip of the spear of really driving our customers to go realize that. Really, it just really supports the other thing that we've heard over and over, which is to have kind of this common data platform layer and think of it as a platform is, as you said, the solutions and the applications and what defines modern marketing tomorrow are going to be different than today. But if you don't at least have that common layer to enable you to continue to add, change, evolve, develop, you won't be able to take advantage or you got to start from scratch, which is never really a thing. That's exactly right. It's really interesting watching Steve Krause really talk about this in the product keynote. And we actually followed up with it. We had a number of our CMOs together and had a great conversation about what Steve called micro moments. And it doesn't sound like, oh gosh, it's just so cutting edge, bleeding edge, but it's really understanding as humans, how do we actually, how do we interact with brands? And it's in these simple, very minor moments where we're just checking our phone or we just had a moment to go do something and the fact that we're catching someone in that moment, I mean, that's an amazing thing to be able to now do and orchestrate and doing it in a very personal way. I think these small things that marketers are starting to put together to take someone that was anonymous. I didn't even know you existed and were even somebody I should talk to with my brand. And now you're part of my advocacy program because in a few of these micro moments, I've been able to move along the journey. They haven't been prepared for that. So you guys are enabling the preparation for them to be in the moment on the spot. I mean, I think the trends that we're seeing, obviously yesterday, Facebook's announcements or earnings were blown away. Amazon just reported today. They blew past their estimates. So you got Amazon web services, standing up stuff easily, Facebook, obviously with the mobile 15 billion in revenue. This is pretty much validation that a sea change of change of modern marketing will happen every day. So more cloud like is the norm. Standing up stuff agile, faster, quicker. Yes. In fact, it was brought up in one of the key notes yesterday that augmented reality is like the next big thing. And what would that mean? I mean, we can probably AI. Pontificate about that for a while. Yeah, we go for a long, long time on that one. All right, final question for me is really around what you see that excites you right now and what's surprised you. So two questions. What's exciting you right now in the customers and the customer successes that you're having and your relationships and what's surprised you? So what are you excited about and the biggest surprise over the past year? So I think what excites me is that we're never done. We're never done innovating. We're never done in terms of really pushing our customers to achieve new business value, new success. We're never done when we think about training our teams to be even better. I think that that quest to just drive and I guess it's that entrepreneurial spirit we have in this space just to continue to push ourselves to achieve new areas of success with our product success with our teams. That's what's really compelling. I think in general the space of helping customers be successful is certainly a huge passion of mine and knowing that we are helping them achieve this and seeing those real business value results is just amazing. It truly is the center of gravity that we've built. And I think in terms of what surprised me I think that when you've certainly talked about culture actually earlier and when you're bringing together these different companies that ultimately that's the proof, right? The proof point, can you do this? I think that the thing that's really humble inspired me is how amazing my organization is, how excited they are about moving forward and being a part of a brand new identity. I just didn't expect that. I think that you expect with change management it's hard but I think that this what we are doing within the Oracle Market Cloud with our customers and with our products is actually this nucleus that is forming this desire as previous companies to change, to transform what we're doing every day. It's a great reflection on the leadership team. I mean that's terrific. Well thanks so much for sharing this awesome insight on theCUBE, thanks so much. This is theCUBE bringing the signal from the noise here live in Las Vegas for Oracle's modern marketing experiences. We'll be right back. You're watching theCUBE.