 It's The Cube. Here is your host, Jeff Crick. Hi, Jeff Crick here with The Cube. We are live on the ground in Redwood City, California, actually Redwood Shores at the corporate headquarters of Oracle. And we're really excited for this next segment to have Meg Berron. She's the group VP of Social Cloud at Oracle. Speaks all the time. Glad we could grab her for a few minutes. So Meg, welcome. Thanks for having me. This is very exciting. Absolutely. So give everybody a little background on what Social Cloud is at Oracle. Yeah. So Social Cloud is part of our customer experience portfolio where we do social listening on public social media, social engagement back for marketing purposes, and then all the way through the entire customer life cycle, bringing that customer voice into everything you do with your customer experience. So talk a little bit about social and enterprise software because it's a little different than B2C and kind of new and wacky and Oracle has been around for a long time. You guys have really big, heavy products there and you've got a huge customer distribution base. How is social kind of working into that? There's one thing to listen, but really more on the engagement side. How do you guys define engagement? What does engagement look like? Right. So when you think about how customers are changing, you and I as customers and consumers, we have a lot more information. We have a much bigger voice. And Oracle's customers are trying to figure out how to use that for good, right? How to build products that really work for the customer needs. How to connect with the customers and understand more about them from everything from product introduction to that ongoing relationship that you build, every piece of that. And social kind of plays a part in all of that life cycle. And is it direct like, you know, somebody has a bad experience on Uber, right? They give the guy a bad rating. How does it work within an enterprise setting really in the context of this much bigger kind of engagement? Right. Depending on your business, if you're direct to consumer, obviously the customer's voice is very critical. So maybe you're a hotel and your customers are complaining. They're not any longer just calling up the front desk. They're going on Twitter and saying, hey, what's going on? Your wireless is down, right? And so that level of engagement and that level of understanding is the expectation. But even in B2B, so our customers at Oracle, they're expecting to do a lot more research and to connect with the overall ecosystem, both with Oracle as a brand and also as part of that overall participation with each other. And that's really how that shift is happening, the dynamic of the customers in control and the customer's voice is something that companies need to listen to and to be part of. So the other kind of interesting thing I think in the context of big companies, right, is a lot of corporate marketing, you know, corporate comms, a lot of, you know, here's our message that we're trying to get out. But now there's this opportunity to not only engage with the outside world, but also to integrate their content, integrate their feedback. How does that kind of jive and are kind of the corporate comms, walls, I don't know, breaking down is not the right word, but opening up and being more receptive to stuff that they don't have absolute control over anymore. Yeah. The good news about this is that you're able to hear directly from customers in a way you probably never were before, especially if you're a B2C company. And in that, you can do really interesting things by taking that insight and information into your product development. Let me give you a couple examples. We have a customer leapfrog, and they make children's toys, electronic children's toys here in the Bay, and they've had their customers calling for products to come back. They actually were able to bring an entire product line back that they had sunsetted and thought nobody wanted anymore because their customers told them. We have a customer General Motors who were hearing product feedback about cars after they were already released, and they were able to make changes on the product line in production to make sure they fixed those problems directly. So that voice of the customer is turning into not just a corporate comms thing, but something that actually impacts product development and impacts the way that you bring changes into the market. Yeah, that's really interesting. And I guess kind of a codependency of that is really kind of this agile methodology of business today, not only in a software development mode, but really in a way to do business where you have the opportunity to make changes because you're not doing these once annual, once every two year upgrades, but you can actually now react to this feedback. Yeah, so it's a big part of cloud, right? When you think about what expectations are changing and how innovation is expected of companies, really when you think about that pace of change, that's where cloud comes in because ability for companies to respond to that requires the ability in their business model and their technology to be very agile, and that's part of our overall, you know, move to the cloud as Oracle because our customers need that kind of innovation much more quickly than they ever had it before. So then, right, big data always comes into play. Everybody's got to make database decisions and do things based on data. People know they have to be in social. The CEO's kid has a Snapchat account, right? I got to be on social, everybody's in social. How do people measure success? When we make the investment, we know we have to play. How do they use your platform or other ways to actually measure and show that, yes, this is having a positive impact? Right, there's a couple things there. So one of the things that social has brought us from a technology point of view is the ability to read a large amount of unstructured data and get insight from it very quickly. So the technology has really helped us bring that forward. And so then you can find these patterns and make these changes. And then when you think about how you measure what you've done based on that, you really start to think multi-dimensionally with business, right? You need to think not only about the voice of the customer being part of your communication strategy, but also part of your product strategy, part of your engagement strategy, and how you connect with the customer. So if it's about service, it's about how do you resolve the problem very quickly at the pace of social? If it's about product, it's about how do you bring that customer's voice into what you build? You need to think of all of those things. And that measurement, you need a data strategy to make happen. Right, right. So I want to shift gears a little bit to talk more specifically about you. One of the things in doing a little homework for this interview is you talking about really running a startup inside of Oracle. You've got a bunch of products that were acquired from the outside that you've now assembled into this new suite. Talk a little bit about that experience in trying to basically run a startup from a collection of startups in what is a very big company. Yeah, what people don't realize about Oracle is while we are 130,000 people or probably more now, and we are a very big global company. We are also very innovative and very supportive of the startup culture inside of Oracle. And I'm really blessed in that bringing in new companies has been a lot about helping us form our cloud, both in how we learn, how we innovate and how we bring that thinking and that human talent into our overall innovation cycle here at Oracle. So that's a big part of the whole process for us. And then you've got Larry the sailor who can turn the ship on a dime. We were joking last year at Oracle Open World that Larry's now said cloud is good and it's full steam ahead as we look out over the lake, you've got the sailboat out there. So you've got the combination of a big company, but still a really strong founder who can make things happen quickly. Yeah, and a real visionary, right? I mean, we have a vision for what we want to do in the cloud and we have the ability to execute across the globe. And I think that's pretty unique for us here at Oracle. I think I just read some quote from heard about like 85% of our current offerings will be available on the cloud, something along those lines. I don't want to misquote the quote. So let's talk a bit about your journey. There's a lot of talk about women and stem and stem for girls. I looked up your background. You don't have a stem background. You, let me see, you majored in economics and entrepreneurship to two subjects near and dear to my heart. That's right. And yet in five years after you graduated, you had a VP of engineering title. So talk about how kind of a classic humanities education still enabled you to get a VP engineering role, which is a technical rule. How did you get there? Yeah, you know, I was so fortunate. I came to tech at a perfect time. It's even better now. But when I started, it really was both love at first sight for me because I loved the innovation and I loved the rapid pace of change. But also because it really was about looking for opportunity and looking forward and seeing what's coming. And that is really what was the linchpin for me in building a technology proficiency. Because what I had was a really good understanding of business and what business needed to be successful. And then I was able to marry that with the technical enablement, how technology helped make business work. And that was probably for me that differentiating piece that sort of helped propel my personal career. And I also think it brings up a great point. There's a lot of roles, types of jobs you can do, responsibilities, skill sets required in the technology world beyond just coding. Coding, in fact, I always like to joke that coding is the easy part. It's the packaging and the wrapping and the pricing, go to market. Yeah, go to market. It's not just about the code. I think that coding is a great enabler, but knowing that you're building the right product that the market wants is the key piece. And so while I was able to do a lot of technical things myself, I was also really good at mobilizing teams to build the things that customers really needed. And I think that is the piece that differentiates the vast wealth of technology we have versus the successful companies that really help move business forward. You also talked very personal story. I think one of your blogs about, again, this is part of our Women in Tech series, and Tech's obviously a very male-dominated space. You've been very successful, as a lot of our guests have been. But talking about growing up with a single father and really kind of getting his perspective and, I don't know, more male-ness than maybe if you had had your mom. I wonder if you could talk about the influence of that and how that has helped you in your journey. Yeah, I, again, you don't realize all the blessings that come with things that seem like maybe hardships or maybe challenges. I'm really fortunate growing up having a single dad that was actually quite innovative and a big problem solver, but also a really hard worker at a fantastic work ethic. And just bringing forward that comfort with men and that sense of that my voice mattered in that conversation. I recognize that has been a real big asset for me because there's really no challenge that I feel like my voice doesn't matter in that conversation. And I should say that my children are lucky enough to have a stay-at-home dad as well. And I feel like they're getting a real privilege there as well. I think men bring a lot to the conversation for girls. Yeah, that's very fortunate. I've got girls, John and Dave, have girls, you know, something we're all very passionate about. Obviously we want nothing but the best for them. But now let's, so let's, you talked about the girls. And one of the things that we look for in this series is to give advice to young girls, young women who, you know, decided they want to get on this journey. I mean, when I moved to the Bay Area, it's like, well, I got to be in tech, right? That's the engine that drives the area. What advice would you give them as they're either starting their careers or starting to look out a little bit down the road as to things they should be thinking about? What was my own daughters? I definitely encourage them that coding is, you know, sort of the new math, the true proficiency that they need for communicating in the future. The difference with digital natives is, of course, technology is comfortable to them. They don't have to learn anything. And it's not something you do separate in a dark room with, you know, technology that is very expensive. It's available everywhere. So I think today's kids, it's a lot more about being part of taking their creative side and building things with that creativity that serve, you know, the community that serve our world, that serve our business, that serve our economy. So I think that as well as having that confidence, I think it is true that girls need to speak up more, need to be able to have their voice heard and making sure that they don't encourage themselves to think that they're bad at math. I mean, these are all things I really work hard with my own children to help them understand. And I think you said you work with some organizations, both here at Oracle and outside. So, you know, go ahead and give a plug for some of the people that you're working with and organizations that you think are making a difference and are worth your time. Yeah, so obviously inside Oracle, we have Oracle's women's leadership. It's over 70 communities that are served around the globe that's really sort of a organic grouping of women helping each other, and I think that's so important. And then in the Bay Area, the executive organization of Watermark, I'm on their strategic development board, and I'm really passionate about the idea of bringing the visibility for executive women in the Valley. Great. So just to close it out, we'll come full circle back to social. What are you most excited, if we were to come sit down and do this again next year, what really makes you excited about this evolution of social business? Yeah, so it's in early days where the voice of the customer is actually having substantive change in business. We are seeing evidence of it, we have examples of it, but they're really few and far between. I think as social starts to grow up and become part of how that voice of the customer comes together with the stuff you already know about what do they buy, what are they are interested in, and how do they want to connect with you? I think when all of that comes together, businesses become more customer centric, and I think that's the real ticket to success. Yeah, I think you said in one of your prior interviews, again, looking up that really social enables kind of the vision of what CRM always wanted to be, because now you have that 360 degree view. It's about the customer connecting with the company, not the company pushing information out to the customer. So yeah, it's a big deal. Great. Well thank you very much, Meg, for spending a few minutes with us. A terrific talk. So I'm Jeff Frick, we are on the ground with Meg Bear at Oracle, Redwood City. You're watching theCUBE, we'll see you next time.