 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017. Brought to you by Oracle. Hello, and welcome back to a CUBE coverage of Oracle's Modern Customer Experience Conference here at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. I'm John Furrier with SiliconANGLE theCUBE. With my co-host this week, Peter Burris, head of research at wikibon.com, part of SiliconANGLE Media. Our next guest is Austin Miller, product marketing director for Oracle Marketing Cloud. Welcome to the CUBE conversation. Thank you very much for having me. The coveted post-launch spot. Yeah, we have a lunch coma kicking in. But no, seriously, you have a really tough job because you're seeing the growth of the platform play. Really robust hours on the platform. But how you got here, through some really smart acquisitions, but handled well and integrated. We've covered that last year. You guys are seeing some nice tailwinds with some momentum, certainly around the expectations of what customers want. Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the best things when we started thinking about, to your point, product integration, it's also the way that we are talking to our customers about how they can use the products together. It's not merely enough just to have maybe one talk to another, but unless we prove out the use cases, you don't get the utilization. I think this year what we've really seen is getting those use cases to actually start getting some traction in the field. So this integrated marketing idea is seems to be the reality that everyone wants. Where are we on that progress bar? Because this seems to be pretty much unanimous with customers. The question is how to get there, the journey, and the heroes that are going to drive them, the theme of the conference. But the reality is this digital transformation is being forced for business change. And marketing is part of that digital fabric. I think that one of the most interesting things about this is if you look at kind of the history of when did the stack start becoming actually a part of the story. It was at a point where we didn't really necessarily even have the capabilities to do it. As a result, many marketers who thought they were maybe buying into a stack approach got a little bit burned. I think that now we are actually at that place where that value is not only something that they can see inherently and say, oh, I like all these applications that talk together, but it's actually feasible. It's something that they're going to be able to use. And they can be optimistic about, frankly. Where are they getting burned? You mentioned that from buying into a full stack of software for a point solution. Is that kind of what you meant? Or what are the reasons? I think that in the marketing realm, when you're talking to marketers, it is very easy to think about all the horrible things that they have to deal with on a daily basis, all these problems. And the reality is that oftentimes you've had to have this conversation with them that says, you know, there are not going to be easy answers to hard problems. There are usually hard answers to hard problems. We can help alleviate some of that friction, especially when we start talking about data silos or things about interoperability. So being able to not just have an integration but pre-built function within these particular platforms. But, you know, realistically, it just wasn't something that we necessarily, in the market in general, were able to deliver on until somewhat recently. So I am very happy that I heard you use the word use cases, especially after lunch. Because that's been one of the biggest challenges of both marketing technology, when we think about big data, as if there's been such a focus on the technology, getting the technology right. And then the use cases and how it changed the way the business or the function did things, kind of either did or didn't happen. Talk about how a focus and use case is actually getting people to emphasize the outcomes and how Oracle is helping people that turn that into technology decisions. This may sound almost counterintuitive, but in reality, the way that use cases we see helping us the most is that it really helps spur about the organizational changes that we need in order to actually have some of this happen. Because it's very easy to say, we have all this technology marketer, you should be using it all. But if you don't actually prove it out and how that's going to impact, let's say the way that they're creating their marketing messages on even a kind of not exciting basis, like how are you creating your emails? How are you creating your mobile messaging? How are you doing your website? And then start talking about those in actual use cases. It's very hard for people to organize their organizations around this kind of transformation. They need something tangible to hold on to. And the old way was put things in buckets. Exactly. We got one covered, move on to the next one. Or by channels even. So we got an email solution, or we got a web solution. And as the customer moves amongst these different mechanisms, or engages differently with these mechanisms, the data that becomes, we talked a lot about this, becomes the integration point. And that, as you said, affects a significant change on how folks think about organizing. But what do you think are going to be some of the big use cases that people are going to be, or that you're providing advice and counsel to folks on in 2017? Yeah, so I think that talking about marketing specific use cases is really important, especially when we start thinking about how am I using my first party data that I may have within a particular channel? And I'm using that to contextually change the way I'm communicating to somebody on another channel. But if we kind of take that theme and we think about, let's not just expand it to marketing, but let's really talk about customer experience. Because as a customer, I go in-store, I go on email, I go on your mobile app, I don't view those as different things. That's just my experience with your brand. And even as we start getting to maybe some of the service things, if I call into a call center, the way that we're really thinking about marketing is not only bringing all this information across our traditional marketing channels, but how are we helping marketers drive organizational change beyond the traditional bounds of even their own marketing department into service, into sales, into on-store? Because in reality, that's where kind of the next step is. It's not just about, to your point, promotional emails. It's about how are we bringing this experience across the full spectrum? So it's really how is first-person data going to drive the role of marketer differently? The tasks of marketing is a consequence. And therefore, how are we institutionalized that work? Absolutely. And to, you know, I think that you can see this in the investments that we've made in the ODC Oracle Data Cloud. It's first step. Let's start thinking about how we can start moving right on first-party data. That would be a nice starting point. But then afterwards, how are we taking third-party data, let's say from offline purchases, starting to incorporate that in? That's their third-party data. Because then we really start getting to that simultaneously good experience or at least consistent experience across digital, across in-store. We start piecing together, but we really need to start at that baseline. A lot of people have been talking about the convergence of ad tech and market tech for years. And, you know, we had a CUBE alumni on our CUBE many years ago when the big data movement started to happen and he was, you know, visionary, revolutionary kind of guy, Jeff Hammerbocker, who was founder of Cloudera, who's now doing some pioneering work in New York City around science. He's since left Cloudera. But he said on the CUBE, what really bothered him was some of the brightest minds in the industry working on using data to put an ad in the right place. And he's kind of being kind of critical of use it for, you know, cooler things. But when you look at what's happening on more tech side when you have customer experience, that same kind of principles of predictive thinking around how to use an asset is can be applied to the customer journey. So now you bring up the question of AI. If you broaden the scope of ad tech and market tech to say all things consumer in any context, at any given time, you got to have an AI or machine learning approach to put the right thing at the right place at the right time that benefits the user. Not just that. That's not scalable. I mean, that's the reality of it. To your point, if you're going to start thinking about this across all these different channels, including advertising as well, the idea of being able to do these on one off basis from a manual perspective, it's completely untenable. I mean, it is, you're completely correct. But to that point, you know, where you're talking about the best minds in the industry may be dedicated to figuring out, you know, if I put a little target here, am I going to get somebody to click on that ad one time or how am I placing it? That is very much the way that we were at the very beginning parts of marketing technology where it was batch and blast, you know, messaging. How can we just kind of get the clicks and the engagement and how do we send out all the- Spray and pray. Exactly. And now I think that we are getting to a much more nuanced understanding of the way that we advertise because it's much more reliant on context. It's not just how can I get my stuff in front of somebody's eyeballs. It's how am I placing it when they're actually showing some sort of intention for maybe the products that I already have. Yeah. Well, adaptive intelligence is interesting to me because what that speaks to is one, being adapted to a real time, not batch, spray and pray and the old methodology of database driven things. No offense to the main database kind of oracle, but it's a system of record, but now new systems of data are available and that seems to be the key message here that the customer experience is changing. Multiple channels, that's the omni-channel. There needs to be that, everyone's looking for the silver bullet. They think it's AI, augmented intelligence or artificial intelligence. What are those, how do you see that product roadmap looking because you're going to need to automate. You're going to need to use software differently to handle literally real time. Completely. And I think that this is a really important distinction about the way that we view AI and how it factors into marketing technology and the way that I think a lot of people in the industry do. I think that once again this theme of there aren't easy answers to hard problems, it is very pleasant to think that I'm just going to have one product that's going to solve everything from when I should send my next email to if there is clean water in this particular area in a third world country. That's just something that maybe sounds nice, but it's not necessarily something that's actually tangible. The way that we view AI is it's something that's going to be embedded and actually built into each of these different functions so that we can do the mission critical things on the actual practical level and kind of make it real for marketers. Make it something that isn't just kind of like, oh just buy this and it'll solve all your problems. So I got to ask you the question, the old adage. Use the right tool for the right job. And if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So a lot of people lose email marketing that way. They're using it for notifications when in reality that's not the expectation of the consumer. Some are building in a notification engine separate from email. All that stuff's kind of like under the covers and the weeds, but the bigger question to you is, and I want to get your insight on this because you're talking to customers all the time is as customers, as you said, need to change organizationally, they're essentially operationalizing this modern era of CX customer experience. So it's a platform based concept which pretty much everyone agrees on. But we're in the early innings of operationalizing this. So how do you see that evolving and what do you want customers to do to be set up properly if they're coming in to the first inning of their journey or even if they're midstream with legacy stuff? Yeah, and I think that that's a really good perspective because you don't want to necessarily force people to go through excruciating organizational change in preparation if we're in maybe the first inning, but it is really just about setting up the organization to adjust as realistically we get into the middle innings and into the later innings. And really the kind of the beginning foundation of this is understanding that these arbitrary sort of almost like tribal distinctions between who owns what channel, who's the email marketer, who's the mobile person, they need to be broken down and start thinking about things instead of these promotional blasts to your point or even maybe reactionary notifications. How is this contributing to like the number of times your brand is touching me in a day or the way that I'm actually communicating? So I think that it's an interesting kind of perspective on how we would organizationally set up for that. But the short answer is that AI is going to fundamentally change the way that marketers are operating. It's not going to fundamentally change maybe everything that they're doing or it's not going to be replacing. It's going to be a complementary role that they need to be ready to adjust to. So you are, you're in product, product management. Product marketing. Product marketing. So you are at that interface between product and marketing. Both moving more towards agile. How are you starting to use data differently and how would you advise folks like you in other businesses not selling software that might not have the same digital component today but might have a comparable digital component in the future? What would you tell them to do differently? So I think that the first step is to actually have an honest assessment of what we have and what we don't have. I think that there's a lot of people who like to kind of close their eyes or maybe plug their ears and just sort of continue down the path of least resistance. Oh, an honest assessment of what kind of data we do have today. What kind of data we might actually need. And then most importantly, is that actually feasible data to get? Because you can't, you know. You can't wish it, but you can't get it. We can wave a magic wand and say this is the, you know, these are the numbers that I need on this particular, maybe interest level of these particular clients. So the fatal flaws, hoping that you're going to get data that you never get or it's un-gettable. Or this is really something that I think a lot would resonate more with marketers is that we have now set up all these different points of interaction that are fire hoses of data spraying it at me. I may be able to, you know, retroactively look at it and maybe garner some kind of insights, but there's just no real way for me to take that and make it actionable right away. I mean, it is a complete mess of data in a lot of these issues. And that's where AI comes in. Absolutely. It's able to automate that reaction. Triage at a bare minimum. So the first starts with data, what would be the second thing? So it's data, presume that you're going to need help on the triage in organizing that data. Is there a third thing? I would say that it's a, you're going down the right path of the steps there, but once again, we're all talking about these kind of concepts that do require a great deal of specialization and a lot of actual understanding of the way that we're dealing with data. So honest assessment is definitely that first part, but then do I have the actual people that I need in order to actually take action on this? Because it is a specialized kind of role that really hasn't traditionally been within marketing organizations. I know you guys have a big account-based focus, account-based marketing, you know, doing all kinds of things, but I'm a person, I'm not a company. Correct. So that's a database thing. Hey, what company do you work for? Get all the people who work for that company, error target list. I'm a person. I'm walking around, I got a wearable. I might be doing a retail transaction. Absolutely. So the persona-based seems to be the rage and it seems to be the center we heard from Mark Hurd, his keynote, that's obviously his perspective and others as well. So it's not like a secret, but how do you take that to the next level? I mean, account-based could help there too, but you need to organize around the person and that seems to open up the identity question of, okay, how do I know it's John? And I think that that goes beyond just personal taste, but into what does this person actually do with this company? Because I can go in and give a head-spinning presentation to maybe a C-level executive to say, look at all this crazy stuff you can do. And meanwhile, the guy who might be making the buying decision at the end of the table is looking at that and being like, there's no way we could do that. We don't have the personnel to do that. There's no chance. And you have already dissension from the innards of the actual people who are making the buying decisions. The vision can't be so big that it resonates with no one. And you need to understand on a persona level what is actually resonating with them. Because feasibility is a very important thing to our end user. And we need to actually incorporate that into our messaging so it's not just so pie-in-the-sky visioning. Yeah, I did a piece of research, sorry, John. I did a piece of research a number of years ago that looked at the impact of selling mainly to the CIO. And if you sell successfully to the CIO, you can probably guarantee nine months additional time before the sale closes. Yeah. Because the CIO says, this is a great idea and then everybody in the organization who's now responsible for doing it says, hold on, don't put this in my KPIs and will I take a look at it and what it really means and blah, blah, blah. Don't make me responsible for this stuff. You just added nine months. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I even have a very minute example for something that we rolled out. And this was a great learning opportunity which is we rolled out a feature called multivariate testing. It's not important what exactly it is for the purposes of this, but basically it's the idea of you can take one email, make eight versions of it, test it and then send out the best one. Sounds great, right? I'm an executive. Boy, I'm going to get every last ounce of revenue from my emails. I'm only going to send out the best content. You don't pitch that right. The end user, all they hear is, wait, wait, the thing that I do one of, I have to create eight of now? I mean, am I going to get to see my kids ever again? I mean, it's like, that's just the way that you have to adjust. And seven of them are going to be thrown away. Exactly, a seven of them are going to be called a failure. Exactly, so it's just not something that you can take for granted because marketers have a variety of different roles and a variety for responsibilities. And compound that with everything's going digital. So, very chaotic world. Austin, great to have you on theCUBE. Spend the last minute though. I would like you to just share for the last minute, what's the most important thing happening here at Modern CX besides the simplicity of the messaging of modern era of customer expectations, experiences. All that's really awesome. But what should people know about that? Aren't here watching. Yeah, I mean, I would just say that the one thing that I at least resonate most with me, and this is once again coming from a product and sort of edging on marketing, is that the things that we've been talking about with not only AI, but even just simple things like having systems that are communicating to each other, they're actually real. And we're seeing them as real. You can actually see them working together in products and serving up experiences to customers that we're even doing now as part of the sales process and saying, hey, this is how you would actually do this as opposed to just, here's our Chinese menu of different options, pick what you want and then you can just kind of serve it up. Because I think that there's something that's very heartening to maybe marketers who have a little bit of, I don't know, doubt about whether or not this is real. It is real, it's here today and we're able to execute on it. And that's the integration of a multi-product and technology solution. Yeah, and I would almost say it's slightly different from that though in terms of it's not just integration of these pieces, it's integration that's pre-built. So we actually have it pre-built together and then we also have these tremendous new innovative features and functionality that are coming with those integrations. It's not just portability, it's actual use cases. Would you say that it's as real as the data? It's as real as the data. I think that that's- If you have the data, then you can do what you need to do. That's a very, very good point. Austin Miller, product marketing director at Oracle Marketing Cloud. Thanks for sharing the data here on theCUBE where agile, agile marketing is the focus. I'm John Furrier, Peter Burst. More coverage from day one at Mendele Bay for Oracle Modern Customer Experience Show. We'll be right back with more after this short break.