Oracle is redoubling its efforts to seize an upper hand in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology solutions just as the applications written for sales, marketing, and customer service automation are moving like quicksand for both vendors and software buyers alike.
For more than a decade, Oracle has been busy perfecting an integrated front-office strategy since its purchases of CRM pioneer Siebel in 2006 and best-of-breed customer experience specialists like Bluekai, CrowdTwist, Eloqua, Moat, Responsys, and RightNow in subsequent years. Much of that painstaking work from adoption of a single data model to consolidation of multiple knowledge management systems for customer helpdesk was overshadowed by the audacious maneuvers of key competitors like Salesforce with its splashy Dreamforce user conferences and expensive purchases of Clicksoftware, Mulesoft, Tableau and Slack that cost Salesforce more than $50 billion in total.
Another development that now favors Oracle is that its cloud applications business including CX has been growing 20%+ consistently over the past few quarters. Its recent acquisition of Cerner will enable Oracle to cross-sell its CRM products to the over 27,500 healthcare customers that rely on Cerner for much of their back-end system needs. On the other hand, Salesforce in the most recent quarter posted a 12% rise in its CRM applications revenues. And it expects the current quarter to do not much better than that.
Today, Oracle is banking on the fact that the changing market conditions will work to its advantage as buying preferences gravitate toward streamlining technology additions for end-to-end enterprise visibility that spurs better efficiency gains and perhaps greater IT savings when back-end and front-office systems are connected and supported without any interruption.
After implementing internal restructuring measures in 2022, Oracle executive vice president Rob Tarkoff, who has been spearheading its CRM product division since 2018, said the vendor is well-positioned to strike hard just when its enemies are retreating. By combining its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for low-cost global service delivery with a modern user interface that eases retrieval of unified customer data repositories, Tarkoff believes the vendor has a much better shot at scoring CRM customer wins than any time in the past.
With that enhanced visibility, “CX is about empowering who’s getting to the customer first,’’ Tarkoff said. This should lead to greater customer insights that generate repeated sales and more recurring revenues, enhance marketing automation and advertising capabilities when unified customer data is readily available, and improve service experience when organizations can predict accurately maintenance upkeep and delivery time.
In conjunction with the February 2023 release of a 49-page Oracle CX Statement of Direction through 2028, Katrina Gosek, vice president of Oracle CX product management, said all these attributes will help Oracle expand its presence in key verticals like communications, financial services, healthcare, asset-heavy manufacturing, and utility if not upping the ante in order to regain the CRM leadership position overtime.
Oracle Squares Off With CRM Rivals
While Oracle’s CX turnaround story is evolving, competitors are finding themselves recalibrating their operations after years of unbridled growth during the pandemic.
Salesforce faces an onslaught of challenges from layoffs of thousands of employees amid growth deceleration to change of direction demands issued by a budding list of activist investors. Adobe is also experiencing a slowdown that prompts the No. 2 vendor in CRM applications to peg its fiscal 2023 forecast to somewhere between 15% and 16% for its Customer Experience products, more than 10 percentage points below what it posted in fiscal 2021.
Meanwhile, SAP announced in January its decision to sell off its majority stake in customer experience management vendor Qualtrics, essentially dismantling its earlier approach to weave Qualtrics’ XM offerings into its ERP and Hybris eCommerce products.
There seems to be no better time than now for Oracle to kickstart its CX offerings into overdrive after years of capturing a steady number of converts as well as convincing its existing customers to broaden adoption of a full range of back-end and front-office solutions that form the basis of its Fusion Applications Suite.
According to a new study of 204 use cases of Oracle CX products as part of our Buyer Insight Master Database quarterly updates, nearly two-thirds of customers reported that API and Data Integration (CRM, Sales, Marketing, Support, Analytics) was the biggest reason behind their decision to implement a complete set of Oracle CRM applications.
That was followed by Improved Customer Acquisition Processes among more than half of these organizations, Better Sales Engagement by Tracking Customer Behavior among 49% of the use cases and Integrated Campaign Management with Marketing Automation at 46% of the surveyed users, as shown in Exhibit 1.
Exhibit 1: Top Reasons Among Oracle Customers And Their Next-Generation CX Initiatives
| Top Reasons | % of Total |
| API and Data Integration (CRM, Sales, Marketing, Support, Analytics) | 63% |
| Improve Customer Acquisition Processes | 51% |
| Better Sales Engagement by Tracking Customer Behavior | 49% |
| Integrated Campaign Management with Marketing Automation | 46% |
| Automate Enterprise Service Capabilities (Minimize Downtime, Asset Maintenance, etc.) | 39% |
| Optimize Self-Service Customer Support | 35% |
| Personalization of Account-Based Marketing Development | 34% |
| Boost Brand Awareness and Corporate Reputation | 34% |
| Customer Engagement with Conversational AI (Chatbot, Text) | 24% |
| Consolidation of Disparate CRM systems | 24% |
| Capture Voice of the Customer (VoC) Data | 21% |
| Ensure Compliance (Data Privacy, GDPR, and CCPA) | 12% |
| Update Pricing Engine, Accurate Quotes with CPQ | 11% |
Source: Apps Run The World Buyer Insight Master Database, February 2023,
Base – 204 Unique Customers Running Oracle CX
Five benefits stand out among these Oracle CX use cases:
Real-Time Customer Analytics and Data Transparency is cited as the biggest reason for implementing Oracle CX by 62% of users. Other top benefit getters include Improved Customer Satisfaction Score among 55% of Oracle customers.
Three other major benefits commonly referred to by customers include Unified CX With Customer Data Platform at 46%, Enable 24/7/365 Customer Service With Integrated Processes at 46% of use cases, and Upgrade Omnichannel Experience Across Customer Journey at 45% of these Oracle customers, as shown in Exhibit 2.
Exhibit 2: Top Benefits Among Oracle Customers And Their Next-Generation CX Initiatives
| Top Benefits | % of Total |
| Real-Time Customer Analytics and Data Transparency | 62% |
| Improved Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score | 55% |
| Unified CX With Customer Data Platform | 46% |
| Enable 24/7/365 Customer Service With Integrated Processes | 46% |
| Upgrade Omnichannel Experience Across Customer Journey | 45% |
| Adaptive Marketing Automation for Evolving Consumer Behavior | 37% |
| Maximize Profits With Predictable Recurring Revenues (Solid Sales Pipeline) | 36% |
| Reduce Churn and Prioritize Customer Retention | 30% |
| Increase Customer Lifetime Value | 29% |
| Shorter Sales Cycle, Decrease Cost-Per-Sale | 27% |
| Adopt Social Selling and Digital Advertising | 25% |
| Accelerate Digital Sales (eCommerce) | 17% |
| Iterative Product Innovation Based On Customer Feedback | 17% |
Source: Apps Run The World Buyer Insight Master Database, February 2023,
Base – 204 Unique Customers Running Oracle CX
What these use cases underscore is the fact that an integrated CX approach is what drives these customers to the Oracle tent by giving them more reasons and benefits to standardize on the vendor’s all-in-one solution stack.
Assessing Oracle CX Customer Decisions and Benefits
For example, Broadcom selected Oracle Sales, Oracle CPQ, and Oracle DataFox Data Management as part of its sales process reengineering project for more than 700 users after integrating more than 20 applications – mostly from Oracle – and migrating 30,000 contracts and 200,000 customers to the new framework. Once live, Broadcom automatically generated more than 200,000 sales renewals as the new setup delivers a unified view of the customer, spanning back office and front office.
After migrating to Oracle Cloud CX, Dutch insurer Atradius was able to increase sales team productivity by more than 10% in nine months after automating previously manual processes for lead generation, forecasting, and territory management for trade-invoice collections with Oracle Sales.
The value is not limited to multinationals like Broadcom and Atradius. Banco Nacional de Costa Rica spent only three months to implement Oracle Cloud CX for sales, compared with a few years it took to install its on-premise systems. Upon the Oracle Cloud CX implementation, the bank was able to identify and close a $4 million deal that had been 90% complete at the time because its executives were able to run the new system to connect the dots and access information on 20 different sales methodologies previously scattered all over its operations.
Similar unified CX dashboards have produced tangible benefits across sales, marketing and customer service functions for many Oracle customers:
After implementing Oracle Cloud CX, Brazilian retailer Eletronzema has attracted over 10 million new customers by identifying the pattern that 80% of its ecommerce audience had no prior shopping experience with the electronics retailer in the state of Minas Gerais. After incorporating that insight into its Webstore and changing their perception, it has garnered a 10-fold jump in online revenues.
Using Oracle Eloqua Marketing Automation, US media company Dow Jones’s B2B marketing team has been able to grow its marketing-originated revenue by 14% year over year, and improve marketing-influenced campaign revenue by 57%.
Following the deployment of Oracle Service and Oracle Configure, Price, and Quote in December 2020, Mexican manufacturer Packsys can now precisely identify and analyze all customer interactions throughout the entire process from pricing, to order, to delivery, to service. Service levels have improved from an average of 70% to about 83%, with the goal of reaching 95% to 98%. Using Oracle Cloud, Packsys staff can analyze each stage of the process to identify opportunities for improvement, such as lowering the rate of rejections.
Alaskan telco GCI saw similar results by running Oracle Field Service, which allows the communications company to expose all relevant data fields, including node locations, to the assigned technician’s smart device. Using Oracle Field Service, the company automatically scheduled 95% of work orders, allowing dispatch teams to focus on high-value tasks like solving urgent or critical issues for customers.
Other companies with disparate operations and far-flung service territories to cover like US satellite TV service provider DISH now relies on Oracle Field Service to make its field operations more efficient and cost-effective. Key performance indicators show DISH technician productivity increasing by 15%, with overtime dropping by 55%. Additionally, DISH streamlined planning and dispatching staff by 93% and reduced fleet miles by 10%.
The best practices for these customers revolve around taking advantage of the full stack of Oracle technologies that allow them to improve business processes and cutting costs at the same time.
In Mexico City, Vesta Industrial Real Estate realized the upside potential by running a package of Oracle applications from ERP to CX and from HCM to Primavera for project management after concluding the fact that the integrated systems would be the right tool to capture and analyze its customers, something other CRM systems fail to do. Today, Vesta has reduced the cost of preparing pipeline, financial, and lease portfolio reports by 78%, while cutting the time it takes to create these reports from 45 days to just seconds. With Oracle Cloud CX, Vesta can gather specific requirements about each customer’s intended use, and thereby provide custom services, equipment, and facilities that meet their expectations.
The bottom line is that Oracle Cloud CX has helped businesses get a better handle on a task that used to be elusive to most. In Ecuador, telco Puntonet attributes its improved customer satisfaction to its use of Oracle Cloud CX, reducing technical staff delays by 93%. Puntonet’s call center used to receive about 160 calls a day with complaints about delays in technical visits. Today there are, on average, 10 calls, and there are even days when there are no calls at all.
Sales execution from top to bottom is only possible when the 360-degree view of the customers is within reach. In India, Bausch + Lomb had been battling for years the under penetration of the local contact lens market. With the use of Responsys and the Oracle Cloud CX platform, Bausch + Lomb was able to put into action an all-encompassing sales, partner relationship management, marketing automation and service and support program that engages consumers from free trial to purchase and from renewal to addressing customer concerns throughout the entire journey. After the deployment, Bausch + Lomb reduced acquisition costs by 80%, while leveraging Oracle B2B Service to manage customer and influencer data derived mostly from optometrists and to run lead management effectively.
Just as Oracle is finally reaping the rewards of delivering a CX experience that is seamlessly integrated into its back-office and mission-critical applications after years of development, the same can be said about its customers dependent on the vendor for continuous innovation.
Both retailer Macy’s and restaurant supply provider Trimark have invested in multiple Oracle applications for more than a decade. More recently, Macy’s Credit and Customer Services Call Center has been running Oracle-powered chatbot to handle up to 20% of its customer service inquiries after using Oracle Service to reduce training of its 2,000+ agents, while registering a 25% more usage in its knowledgebase by incorporating Knowledge-Centered Service concepts such as capture, structure and continuous improvement.
Trimark is working equally well by leveraging an Oracle partner to onboard customers across 14 various divisions onto a single B2B eCommerce platform after conducting a major Oracle upgrade as part of its $50-million digital transformation project to further increase online order flow and a decrease in the overhead spent accepting and processing such orders after years of standardizing on JDE Enterprise One, ATG, Primavera, Oracle Access Manager, and a slew of Oracle CX applications including Engagement Cloud for CRM, Configure Price Quote, and Eloqua for Marketing Cloud.
These two use cases illustrate the commitment of Oracle to not just delivering iterative enhancements regularly along with its promise to sustaining support for its on-premise and cloud applications indefinitely.
Tarkoff said the stated mission is to deliver unlimited application support by allowing customers to stay on Oracle’s on-premises applications forever, if that’s the direction they prefer.
With loyal followers and net new customer momentum, Oracle appears to be on track to redefine the CRM market dynamics as many organizations look to bridge their front-office environment with other critical systems for maximum impact.
Oracle CX Customers By Segment
The following graphics outline Oracle CX Customers By Employee Size, Revenue, Country and Industry:
Exhibit 3 – Oracle CX Customers By Company Size
Source: Apps Run The World Buyer Insight Master Database, February 2023,
Base – 204 Unique Customers Running Oracle CX
Exhibit 4 – Oracle CX Customers By Revenue
Source: Apps Run The World Buyer Insight Master Database, February 2023,
Base – 204 Unique Customers Running Oracle CX
Exhibit 5 – Oracle CX Customers By Country
Source: Apps Run The World Buyer Insight Master Database, February 2023,
Base – 204 Unique Customers Running Oracle CX
Exhibit 6 – Oracle CX Customers By Industry
Source: Apps Run The World Buyer Insight Master Database, February 2023
Base – 204 Unique Customers Running Oracle CX
List of Oracle CX Customers
Source: Apps Run The World Buyer Insight Master Database, February 2023
