Customer Experience is your Sustainable Competitive Advantage: Your CxM Journey begins today

You Need Your Customers More Than They Need You

Every customer interaction offers the opportunity to improve the customer relationship, or invite a customer to shop their next purchase elsewhere. Customer Experience Management is a return to the focus on serving and retaining customers—while better integrating that mission with culture, processes and technology. The CX technology movement is in rapid transition and may provide the conduit between strategy and delivery. While obvious, it bears repeating that implementing technology without accompanying strategy is a recipe for a troubled implementation (at best) or an implementation failure. But with that caveat, several CRM software vendors are stepping up to deliver the missing link—that ability to make customer data actionable and deliver it at the time and location of customer interaction with the goal of meeting customer expectations and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. But sometimes it's helpful to take a step back and be reminded of the reason for business. And in the simple but powerful words of Peter F. Drucker, "the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer." Everything else is secondary (at best), and designed to support mission #1.And it's this mission to acquire and retain customers that is putting new found focus on the business strategy of Customer Experience Management (CXM).

To better accommodate the multiple challenges that make business complex, CXM is evolving to make serving customers less of a standalone objective and more of a mission tightly integrated with corporate culture, business processes and supporting technology.

The Business Problem Is Accelerating

Products are becoming more quickly copied making product superiority a diminishing advantage. Technology innovation is depreciating at a faster pace. Brand recognition and value may be suddenly compromised by a single angry customer whose voice is dramatically magnified online. New and constantly expanding social channels give start-ups and small competitors messaging and marketing reach previously only available to large companies.

Further, customers are more informed, connected and demanding. Customers now have on-demand access to a supplier's customers and can quickly interpret how those customers view their supplier's support and services. This information becomes part of a new prospect's purchase criterion, determining which supplier to purchase from and even whether to pay a premium for exceptional support.

Delivering superior products and services remains paramount, but businesses must recognize that this objective will be increasingly challenged and therefore the importance of retaining existing customers will grow ever more important. Consistently meeting or exceeding customer expectations may be the last sustainable competitive advantage not easily and quickly replicated by competitors.

A Shift toward CX Technology

At a time when business is becoming considerably more complex and competitive, existing customer acquisition and retention strategies supported by current systems are too often not working.

CRM software systems have responded well to capturing customer profile data (such as company demographics and individual contacts) and transaction history. New social CRM tools are complimenting CRM systems to include unstructured and social data that reside in externally managed sources.

There remains an open challenge though in interpreting and staging the data so that it may be immediately actionable and injected at the point of customer interaction. Delivering customer intelligence and content at the exact point in time of customer engagement in order to benefit the customer experience is a difficult process that remains elusive for most businesses.

Think about the business scenarios. While the list of customer interaction points is unbounded, here are some common Point of Customer (PoC) engagement examples:

·         For the customer looking to make a purchase on an e-commerce site, does the website apply purchase history and known customer preferences to make a smart suggestion, next-best-offer, or cross-sell or up-sell promotion that is both relevant and personalized?

·         For the customer placing an order on the telephone, is the agent or order entry clerk able to answer product questions or otherwise respond within seconds with the right information to result in a transaction?

·         For the customer seeking help on a social network—perhaps even the vendors own Facebook page—does the supplier hear the request and do they retrieve, route, respond and resolve the customer's request in a reasonable timeframe?

·         For the customer who incurs a product defect, is the call center agent able to immediately validate the product purchase, determine if the product is under warranty, issue a Return Merchandize Authorization (RMA) and initiate a replacement order – in less than a few minutes and without multiple transfers?

·         For a customer support incident not immediately resolved, is the customer permitted to continue the dialogue with cross-channel support options? Not to be confused with multi-channel support. For reference, multi-channel delivers a consistent experience on each channel, where cross-channel support permits customers to begin their engagement on one channel and then use different channels to continue or conclude their issue.

·         For the mobile customer seeking sales or support access, does the supplier's online system support their mobile device form factor, permit the customer to use video from their smartphone and allow the customer to schedule a call back time?

·         Does the self-service portal dynamically deliver content that is most relevant to the customer's business and support problem, and permit the customer to instantly switch from self-service to chat or a live agent call?

·         For the customer receiving a marketing promotion from his supplier, is that offer highly targeted to his company's explicit (demographics) profile and implicit (behaviours) history with the supplier?

·         For the customer engaged in a sales cycle with a supplier, is the information given by the customer regarding his situation, buy criteria and purchase process shared among the supplier side sales team and does that sales team apply the buyer's objectives and buy cycle process to their sales side process (or do they ignore the buyer's purchase process and simply inject their traditional sales pattern)?

Each of these customer interaction points can benefit from technology. In fact, for organizations of even mild scale technology is a requirement. However, to satisfy this need most customers are turning to specialized, often best of breed technologies positioned between their customer systems of record (generally CRM software) and point of customer engagement. It's a workable scenario, but comes with the complexities of managing even more systems and further contributes to disparate data silos.

A new technology approach is now on the horizon. Forward looking CRM software vendors such as Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and Pega are introducing or expanding CRM systems to achieve CXM objectives. Oracle is clearly leading the CX technology push with its Oracle CX software and other vendors are advancing their core applications beyond data capture and information reporting to actually deliver knowledge and content at the point of customer interaction and in a way that meets customer expectations. CXM is positioned to be the next break-out sector in the CRM industry.

What Makes Oracle CX Different?

While several CRM software vendors are praising the virtues of Customer Experience and by association suggesting that their CRM software products are delivering CX value for their customers, the reality is that most are riding a new wave with an unchanged product. Oracle's play is different. Since January 2011, the company has been developing and acquiring a suite of focused applications that collectively deliver something new to directly impact the customer experience at various touch points.

Consider the origins and results of the newly formed Oracle CX software portfolio:

·         The January 2011 acquisition of ATG now serves as Oracle's e-commerce-selling based experiences, to deliver interaction such as predictive offers.

·         The June 2011 acquisition of Fatwire Software (now WebCenter Sites) compliments e-commerce experiences but more so stands as Oracle's tool for delivering dynamic website content and marketing-based experiences.

·         The December 2011 acquisition of Endeca provides Oracle the other half of its complete commerce solution. And by bundling ATG's product catalog functionality with Endecas search capabilities, merchandisers have more tools to make products more accessible more easily.

·         The July 2011 acquisition of the InQuira contact center and knowledge management solution provides Oracle with a strong knowledge management suite, integrated with natural language processing, self-service support, online customer forums and agent-assisted CRM, to deliver content and knowledge at customer interactions through various channels.

·         The January 2012 acquisition of RightNow Technologies delivers Oracle's service based experiences. The RightNow acquisition was key in acquiring strong functionality to collaborate with customers, with tools such as the Cloud Monitor and online communities (Support Community and Innovation Community). In fact, RightNow Technologies was the first large CRM software vendor to eschew the virtues of CXM—years before competitors and their acquisition by Oracle.

·         The announcement to acquire Vitrue in May 2012 followed by the announcement to acquire Collective Intellect two weeks later, collectively delivers Oracle's social based experiences.

·         The latest Acquisition of Eloqua, The marketing campaign excellence tool is another milestone of Oracle CXM commitment.

These best of breed acquisitions, along with organic development to Oracle Siebel CRM, Oracle Fusion CRM, Oracle WebCenter, Oracle Knowledge Management and the Oracle Social Network have resulted in a portfolio that empowers new opportunities and is unmatched in the competitive landscape. This is clearly not a case where oracle is wrapping a new banner on an old or existing solution.

Oracle CX Product Positioning

What we hear from Anthony Lye, Senior VP Oracle CXM  he advised that customers were buying apps and putting them between their CRM software and their customer interactions—in effect using these apps to extract and deliver CRM data at the exact time and location where it can be used to influence a customer interaction.Anthony noted that companies are struggling with making CRM data actionable at the many customer experience touch points and thinking beyond CRM in order to achieve the last mile of customer interaction delivery. And rather than continue to use a collection of 3rd party products and bespoke development, Oracle aims to offer a portfolio of integrated, best of breed solutions to help customers achieve what may be the only sustainable differentiation they have left.

Oracle CX is less about being the successor to CRM and more about addressing a business opportunity using technology that supplements CRM. In fact where CRM ends and CXM starts is that intersection between company and customer—that point of engagement where suppliers actually leverage the data from their CRM system to personalize interactions, reward customers for their loyalty and advocacy, and deliver a customer experience that delights customers.The CX software tools will compliment and extend existing IT investments (in both Oracle and non-Oracle environments) with best of breed products that provide incremental automation and value. Oracle CX looks to be the banner for a collection of tools that may be acquired individually or in small suites.

·         Oracle Cloud CxM video briefing

                                                                                                        Oracle  Fusion Tap Mobility Solution

Next Steps for Oracle CX

Oracle is leading the market in this category. While the upside of leading a burgeoning market is obvious, the downside is that many other CRM and enterprise software vendors will clearly harness the CXM spotlight to create self-serving CX definitions that align perfectly to their existing CRM software suites.

Competitors who hijack the CX messaging and redefine this customer strategy (that has yet to cross the chasm) along their parochial interests will challenge Oracle and frustrate technology buyers—to the point where it is incumbent upon Oracle to clearly articulate their solution, its alignment with business strategy and its measurable value. There is a great opportunity for Oracle to lead this race with the Cloud/Hybrid based CxM solution.

Wishing everyone a great and harmonious Year Ahead, Happy New Year 2013

You’re P&C

DC*

Dinesh Chandrasekar - Practice Leader Profile

Dinesh Chandrasekar

Practice Director CRM & MDM

Hitachi Consulting GDC, India

Dinesh Chandrasekar has over 14 + years of rich IT experience in CRM, MDM & BI implementations, Management Consulting and Strategic Advisory services to CXOs.

• Heading GDC & New Markets (Middle East & APAC) CRM & MDM Practice.
• GDC Sponsor for Oracle Diamond Partner Initiative
• Alliance Manager and Sponsor for Oracle Diamond Partner Initiative of Hitachi Ltd
• Responsible for Emerging Markets  Alliance relationship with Top 5 Product Vendors
• Proven Delivery & Solution expertise in CRM and MDM project executions.
• Actively Involved in Presales, Practice building, Delivery, Alliance Relationship Management, Account Mining, and Business Development.
• Avid blogger http://dineshknowledgeplanet.blogspot.com/
• Passionate about CRM, Digital Art & Coaching.
• Over 50+ Engagement experience across the globe.

Specialties

• Practice Leadership
•  Delivery Excellence 
•  New Technology Incubation
• Management Consulting
• Vendor Alliance Management
• Exceptional skills in CRM, MDM & BI Consulting.
• Innovation and Creativity Evangelist

Representative Client Engagement List : Citibank Global, GE Group, Life Technologies US, Toyota Financial Services  US, Symantec UK , Honeywell US, Juniper Networks US, Hypercom  US, Dell US, NetApp US, Oracle Corporation US, Microsoft US, Informatica US,UMB US,Riyad Bank Saudi, Saudi Telecom-Saudi, Almunajem Saudi, SAPTCO Saudi,ALJ Toyota Saudi, Dubai World UAE, Emaar UAE i, Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce UAE, Dunai Bank UAE, Fullerton Securities India, Bank of China, Alliance Bank-Malaysia, Care Hospitals, Select Comfort,F5 Networks, Hafil Transport , Aljeri KSA, PIB Bank Ukraine, MDB Bank Vietnam, Gulf Drugs UAE, ATS Saudi, Nintendo US, Darling International US, Overhead Doors US, AB Sciex US, Jomaih Pepsi Saudi .Etc.

Practice Director and Delivery Head - CRM & MDM, GDC

Hitachi Consulting :Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; Management Consulting industry

April 2010 – Present (2 years 8 months) Hyderabad Area, India

- Part of Hitachi Consulting's GDC Enterprise Capability Organisation (ECO)
- Practice Enrichment - CRM & MDM expertise
- Global Presales and Solution Orchestration expertise to all Oracle Siebel CRM, MDM & Cloud CRM Applications.
- Delivery Support to all large scale CRM and MDM programs
- Collaborate with Inter Competency teams to provide unique value propositions to our prospects and existing customer.
- Develop Incubation centers for new technologies ( Fusion )
- Manage Oracle Alliance Relationship
- Thought Leadership (Whitepapers, Presentations, Knowledge Mgt)
- Incubation support to all Other Technology CRMs

Practice Head CRM & MDM CoE

Sierra Atlantic

Privately Held; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry

April 2007 – March 2010 (3 years)

Responsible for Delivery and building competency on the following CRM & MDM technologies
* Oracle Siebel CRM
* Oracle EBS CRM
* Oracle Customer Hub (Siebel UCM )
* Oracle Customer Data Hub ( Oracle EBS CDH )
* CRM Business Intelligence and Analytics solution
* Fusion CRM Incubation

Practice Lead - Oracle Siebel CoE

Sierra Atlantic

Privately Held; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry

January 2005 – March 2007 (2 years 3 months)

Actively Involved in Competency building, Project Delivery, Oracle Alliance relationship management,Presales, Account Mining, Business Development and Fusion CRM incubation development.
Practice head of Siebel CoE and Lead member of Enterprise Application group of Sierra Atlantic

PM  & CRM Shared Services Lead

GE CAPITAL, GENPACT

Public Company; 10,001+ employees; GE; Financial Services industry

January 2004 – December 2005 (2 years)

Part of GE Capital Siebel ITSMM Team which managed some of the prestigious GE Siebel Projects for the clients such as
- GE Commercial Finance, US
- GE Vendor Finance Services, US
- GE Aircraft, US
- GE European Equipment Finance, Europe
-Very Challenging and Fulfilling Experience during those period.

Business Analyst - CRM

Citicorp Overseas Software Ltd

Public Company; 10,001+ employees; C; Financial Services industry

June 2000 – May 2003 (3 years)

Worked as a Business for the Following Citibank Implementations
Citibank Siebel Barcelona Call Center Implementation covering the following Countries: Multi Currency & Country Rollouts
- Citibank UK Siebel Implementation
- Citibank Spain Siebel Implementation
- Citibank Portugal Siebel Implementation
- Citibank Greece Siebel Implementation

Worked closely with Multiple Vendor in the Integration Projects including Nucleus Software, Kale Consultants, Polaris Software Labs, Byson Systems & Citibank India Technologies.
* Excellent Exposure to the world of CRM and Banking Technologies. Turning points in my career.

Marketing Analyst

Marketing Research Firm

April 1997 – May 1999 (2 years 2 months)

Market Research and CRM Analyst
- Worked in Multiple Market Research Project for prestigious Consumer Goods Clients
- Product Launch research & incubation of new promotions to support the launch
- Competitor Analysis and USP evaluation

Articles and Whitepapers:  www.dineshknowledgeplanet.blogspot.com

More Information:  in.linkedin.com/in/dineshchandrasekar

Education:

• MBA (IT & Finance), ICFAI Business School Hyderabad
• BBA (Marketing & GM) – University of Madras

Certifications

• Oracle Automotive Industry Specialist

• Oracle Consumer Goods Industry Specialist
• Oracle Public Sector Industry Specialist
• Oracle Healthcare Industry Specialist
• Oracle Aerospace and Defense Industry Specialist
• Oracle Professional Services Industry specialist
• Siebel CRM 8.1X Specialist
• Oracle SOA Implementation Champion
• Oracle Siebel Professional Implementation Champion
• Oracle SOA Champion
• Oracle Business Intelligence Champion.
• Oracle Fusion Middleware Champion
• Oracle Fusion Middleware Champion

Independent Coursework

·         Advance Diploma in Entrepreneurship Development (ILM)

·         Diploma in Industrial Psychology (ILM)

·         Advance Diploma in Integrated Management (CDFI)

·         Six Sigma Green Belt Training (GE Capital)

·         Sierra Atlantic Leadership Program (Sierra Atlantic)

·         Hitachi Consulting Top Gun Executive Leadership Program  ( Hitachi )

Accolades and Awards

• GE Gold Award Winner for the CRM Knowledge Management Implementation
• GE special appreciation Award (2005)
• Best Implementation Team Awards (multiple)
• Excellence in Process Award – Sierra Atlantic 2006
• Best Individual Performance Award – Sierra Atlantic 2006
• Team awards ( Multiple projects ) -2008 & 2009
• CEO Award for Delivery and Presales Excellence 2009-10
• Best Individual Performance Award – Hitachi Consulting 2009
• Hitachi Consulting Service Excellence Award
• Hitachi's Inspiration of the year Global Americas 2012 Award.

Contact Details 

Email : dinwin@hotmail.com 

Phone : + 91 98853 95132  ( India )

Oracle Open World 2012 Rover

Dears,

This year Oracle Open World is bigger than ever with some exciting events, announcements and of course with Hitachi becoming 11^th Oracle Diamond Partner is an absolute landmark to our Oracle practice. Dinesh Chandrasekar and Phani Tamarapalli from our HCC GDC office had the opportunity to be part of this big oracle event and also attended Hitachi’s Oracle Diamond Partner Celebration @ SFO, United States.

The process of digesting the announcements, roadmaps and doubts – confirmed or not – can proceed in full swing. What has become of last year’s plans, what this year’s plans are (for next year and beyond) and what has materialized in terms of Oracle’s product portfolio? For everyone, the answers to these questions and the conclusions will be somewhat different – depending on focus, expectations and requirements. However, some conclusions will be shared by most who attended Oracle Open World 2012. Without a doubt, some of the important themes were and will be: cloud – and at respectable distance – the next generation of database technology (12c) and of engineered systems (Exadata… X3-v2), mobile availability of both standard applications (Fusion Applications and other Oracle Applications products) and custom Portals and applications (through ADF Mobile on iOS and Android).

Facts and Opinions

The biggest thing by far for Oracle this year (past, present and future) is the Cloud. For several reasons, including competition (defensive) and opportunity (offensive), Oracle wants to be in the cloud as quickly as possible – with a full stack offering. Its USPs will be the completeness of the stack (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS including the Social Platform for the Enterprise) and the ability to move from on premise (Oracle software running locally) to the cloud and back. Where Oracle’s software is involved (PaaS on Database, WebLogic and Fusion Middleware) Oracle may be able to compete on price as well – as the price one charges for software can be quite flexible. Through the SaaS offering, Oracle makes the difference on functionality as well as price – since no one else can offers that same software – Fusion Applications – from their cloud.

One other innovative offering from Oracle: if you want all the benefits of the cloud – pay per use model, no upfront investment, fully managed infrastructure and platform – but you cannot have the data leave your premise, for example because of regulatory reasons – you can have Oracle bring the cloud to you. The exact same offering of the Oracle Cloud, managed by Oracle, running within your firewall on your premise. Given that Oracle has the hardware, the software and the service organization to manage it all, they can easily extend their Cloud offering with this service – but that would not be easy for anyone else who does not have the full stack. Here is a real differentiator for Oracle.

Fusion Applications have 400 customers. 100 will be live by end of October. Of these, a substantial percentage (over 65%) run on the cloud. Note: recent SaaS acquisitions Taleo and RightNow are included in these numbers. Only a small percentage runs through Oracle on Demand (managed services with bring your own license) and another small but slightly larger segment runs Fusion Applications on premise. Fusion Applications R5 will be made available sometime in October 2012. Integration into Fusion Applications of the Oracle Social Network is one of the main focus areas right now – as is making parts of the data and functionality from Fusion Applications available on tablets and mobile devices. To that end, a REST style API is exposed for the Fusion Applications. Another major innovation for Fusion Applications is the next generation of User Experience – the improved, simplified look and feel that runs well on both tablet and browser-on-desktop.

ADF: Over the last years, Oracle has adopted ADF – Application Development Framework – as the technology for virtually all of its products – turning ADF into Advanced Dog Food as it were. From Fusion Applications to Enterprise Manager and run time tools such as the SOA Composer and the Golden Gate monitor as well as end user frontends including WebCenter Portal – everything is built using ADF. One of the advantages of this approach is that because ADF is embracing HTML 5 and support for tablets (including multi touch and gestures) – as a result all products based on ADF are automatically enabled for tablet usage. Furthermore, application extensions that need to run on mobile devices using native device capabilities and/or in off-line mode can now be developed using ADF Mobile. An extension of ADF, developer skills and many existing application artefacts can be reused for the creation of ADF Mobile applications. With the release of ADF Mobile imminent, we will quickly see many Oracle products – already based on ADF – with (partly native) mobile extensions running on Android and iOS.

The recent release of ADF Essentials allows organizations to use ADF for design and deployment without license charge – for example on open source stacks such as Linux, Apache Tomcat, MySQL and ADF Essentials (LAMA as opposed to the well-known LAMP stack). This may well bring more developers with an all Java/JEE background (I/O an Oracle history) to the ADF framework (if only for the somewhat higher rates that ADF developers can charge because of the higher productivity the framework allows them to achieve).

ADF applications can be deployed on premise as well as on the Oracle Cloud Java Service that runs WebLogic with the ADF libraries pre-installed. This Cloud environment allows JDBC connection to the Oracle Database Cloud. Apart from the support for Tablet and Mobile devices, the every evolving set of Data Visualizations continues to amaze.

Fast Data – in addition to Big Data (first brought into the lime light by Oracle at OOW 2011) now Oracle also coins the term Fast Data. Both Big and Fast Data deal with large volumes of data. However, Fast Data is meant to describe cases where near real time conclusions need to be derived from the data – sub seconds to a few seconds ‘latency’. Fast Data typically deals with events – small, structured and time stamped packets of data. Complex Event Processing (better indicated as complex processing of simple events) is the technology that does Fast Data (analysis). BigData handles equally large or usually even larger volumes of data that may be quite unstructured – like Tweets – and from which the urgency of deriving results is not as high – minutes or even longer. For signalling trends during a presidential debate, Fast Data and CEP are required. For the post-debate after the commercial type of analysis, BigData is more what we would be looking for. To surf the wave of Fast Data – Oracle is rebranding the CEP product it has been shipping as part of the EDA Suite (Event Driven Architecture) and as component of the SOA Suite under a new name and as a separate SKU (standalone unit on the price list; it is to be called OEP – Oracle Event Processor).

Fusion Middleware 12c has not been announced – nor has its intended release schedule been unveiled. The closest I got to an indication is sometime in 2013, apparently not very long before OOW 2013. The current 11gR1 line is the one used by Fusion Applications – for quite some time to come. There will be additional functionality – perhaps some things that were intended for 12c that now are back ported to the 11gR1 line in order to make them earlier available to both external customers as well as to Fusion Applications. Especially for ADF, WebCenter and BPM there are substantial improvements in PS6 and PS7. Note: WebLogic Server is at its final release in the 11g line – release 10.3.6 is the last of its kind, to be supported until 2017. No new development takes place on this EE5 based container. The 12c release – initially published in December 2011 with support for JEE 6 – is where the action is. WLS 12c is the foundation for all FMW 12c components.

Already a star a few years back during JavaOne, REST has finally made it center stage during Oracle Open World. RESTful services – simple, URL and HTTP based services, usually with JSON for the payload rather than XML or a binary format – are important in two main areas. One is the management of the cloud: (almost?) any API published for accessing and manipulating the Oracle Cloud environment from outside the cloud is published as a REST-style service. The second area is Mobile: mobile devices are much better equipped at dealing with JSON based services for data retrieval and the execution of operations than with XML services (verbose, expensive processing). ADF Mobile thrives on such services for example. In addition to the REST ful APIs in Fusion Applications, WebCenter and many other products, support for both publication and consumption of RESTful services is added to APEX and ADF as well as Oracle Service Bus and SOA Suite (in the 12c time frame).  

Exadata X3 (X3-2 and X3-8) is the new generation Exadata machine. The main focus for this generation is on memory. Up to 26 Tb of memory (largely Flash) can be supported in the machine – allowing for much faster IO operations. It looks like after a few years where the I/O speeds could not keep up with the processor power, we will now see the CPU once again becoming the bottleneck for queries and other serious operations. F40 flash cards are used, with 1.6TB of flash per cell. The version of the Exadata storage server software shipping with the X3 systems will be 11.2.3.2.0, which contains the “flash for all writes” cache. The X3-2 should now also support Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Linux Kernel. The Exadata machine will be available in a 1/8 rack configuration at $200k. This should bring it well in reach for many smaller businesses.

Database 12c is around the corner, obviously. Many sessions during Oracle Open World – from keynotes and general sessions to technical deep dives and Hands on Labs – described 12c features and themes in detail. However, the availability of the software itself is not expected before the end of the calendar year. The key feature of 12c – touted by Larry Ellison himself – is the notion of the pluggable database: one (root or container) database with all the generic elements of an Oracle Database that encompasses between 1 and 200 pluggable databases. Shared between all databases are the data dictionary, the UNDO area and the administration effort. Private to each pluggable database is the definition of application’s database objects and obviously the data itself. Through the concept of Pluggable Database, operations to for example create, clone or upgrade a database have become a lot easier and very much faster (since these operations only involve the non-generic parts of an Oracle Database). Because the Pluggable Databases are really independent database one the one hand that shares a lot of resources on the other, the number of databases that can run on a single piece of hardware is much larger than until now. Clearly through this mechanism Oracle will be able to offer its database cloud service in a much more resource efficient way (multi-tenant at the platform level rather than the application level) than otherwise would have been the case. The same thing applies of course to on-premise infrastructure – i.e. the private cloud.

These product advancements clearly sets the stage for the partners to move on beyond the conventional oracle solutions and look forward to do something innovative and also breeds the need to adopt the new technology inventions. The change is the only thing that doesn't change; the same is true for Oracle Solutions.

Best Regards

DC*

Are you a Goliath waiting for your turn?

Dears,

Many a times being successful doesn’t mean that we should stay forever in our comfort zone. I feel living in your own comfort zone is the most destructive thing that you can ever do to your career growth and It’s much more difficult when you have tasted success and comfortable in doing things which would yield  the same or diminishing results but not a highly rewarding ones since you take a calculated risk of applying your same thoughts, processes and same old fashioned way of doing things. In a way you become a Goliath and this is true even for large companies. Are you a Goliath waiting to be slayed by David’s of the World

When you are doing something truly disruptive, you are in a David versus Goliath situation (and this is especially true for technology).  The story of David is highly instructive for anyone who aspires to do world-changing things, and its lessons go much deeper than an inspirational tale of the little guy beating the big guy.  

Let’s begin with the obvious: David wins by not playing by Goliath's rules.  He doesn't out-muscle Goliath, instead fighting a lightweight, guerrilla style insurgency.  David is Exhibit A for the theory that speed, wits, and the ability to adapt can trump size, resources, and heavy armament.  After felling Goliath with his slingshot, he beheads him with his own massive sword (a gory but potent bit of symbolism often left out of the retelling).  However, David’s selection as champion of the Israelites and his rise to field commander and then to a King were unconventional, even revolutionary acts in themselves.  In fact, almost every key event of David’s ascendancy was highly unlikely. 

For technology professionals, the story of David is a highly attractive one, and the modern-day parallels are striking.  You can think of David’s slingshot as one of the original disruptive technologies – it’s lightweight, requires minimal training, and utilizes off-the-ground commodity hardware.  It is likewise fitting that the term “Philistine” has come to mean someone without any appreciation for art and learning, and this is especially true concerning the perception of software, perhaps the most misunderstood and underappreciated form of technology at the institutional level.  Of course, David himself is the most inspiring part of the story, a young, fearless, brash, but supremely talented leader who emerges from the least likely of places with the most counterintuitive blend of skills.  

However, those who would follow in David’s footsteps must beware the catastrophic, yet often subtle pitfalls along the path.  It is paramount that as David wins, he doesn't become Goliath.  For leaders who emerge from the twister of the hyper-growth phase, this is deceptively easy to do, and the histories of technology are piled with the cautionary examples of companies born from innovation that faded into irrelevance by allowing themselves to become the hated establishment.  David must be true to who he is, not by consciously choosing to remain small and irrelevant, but by resisting Goliath’s arrogance and vulnerabilities - even while embracing growth and influence. 

We spend a lot of time working with large and fortune companies to help them solve their biggest problems.  This tremendously rewarding, and as the sense of partnership and investment in their mission develops, it is tempting to want to be of them as well as work with them.  Yet you can only help them if you are true to David, and this requires you to maintain the unique identity and vantage point of the constant outsider.  And this is why massive institutions need the help of entrepreneurs, even if they don’t realize it at first. 

 This is inevitably a bumpy process, because the cultural bias is to keep David in a limited role, away from the front.  Eventually, though, it becomes clear that in order to do radically different things, they need radically different competencies and perspectives.  If it was simply a matter of finding better top-down management, they could promote from within.  Of course, embracing unconventional wisdom is only the first step.   The far greater hurdle is how to institutionalize agile and independent thinking without becoming doctrinaire and inflexible about it – an ironic but all too common mistake.  Interestingly, this applies to both the century-old brand name that seeks to embrace entrepreneurial culture and the scrappy start up that suddenly finds itself with thousands of employees. 

Thank you

DC*

Dinesh Chandrasekar

Hitachi’s Path to Oracle Diamond Partnership: Diamonds are forever

Congratulation to a Game Changer

,

Dears,

It’s indeed a great pleasure for me to write about Hitachi’s Path to Oracle Diamond Partnership. At the start of this year, we set out to Change the Game, elevating the Oracle practice to unprecedented heights by opening up new opportunities for growth.  We have now met a big piece of that goal in September 2012 & we were officially notified by Oracle that we have been recognized as the newest Oracle Diamond Partner, only the 11^th firm to achieve this elite status in the Oracle Partner Network (OPN).

This is a major milestone for our Oracle practice and indeed for the firm overall.  Together, we are successfully changing the game. I take the privilege to reproduce most of the content which was shared by our Hitachi Oracle Alliance leadership team on this accomplishment.To say this was a team effort would barely do justice to what was accomplished.  Because not only did literally hundreds of people make a difference to this effort, none of the people involved had “achieve Diamond status” in their standard daily job description.  Most of what we achieved came through collaboration and hard work performed above and beyond the normal expectations of everyone’s job. Thank you to all who helped Hitachi to change the game: Our Certified Consultants, Specialization sponsors, GTM Offering owners, marketers, communicators, sellers, consultants, Coordinators and so on.  

How we changed the Game & What did we do to achieve this status

Diamond is the highest level Oracle Partners can achieve in the Oracle Partner Network (OPN) and is available by invitation only.  Of the 20,000+ Oracle Partners, Hitachi is just the 11^th firm to reach this status.  Hitachi was previously a Platinum Partner, the second highest level, which includes more than 200 firms and therefore does not offer nearly the same level of differentiation.

·         Consolidated the Hitachi-Oracle Alliance globally, with unprecedented participation from all relevant Hitachi entities, including Hitachi Ltd. (now the formal owner of the Alliance), Hitachi Consulting, Hitachi Consulting Japan, Hitachi Solutions, Hitachi Data Systems, Hitachi Communication Technologies of America, and other subsidiaries.

·         Achieved the over and above the target in co-sell and resell Oracle license revenue during Oracle FY12 (v. target of $40M).

·         Reached Specialization goals, with 200+ consultants newly Certified on Oracle solutions:

o   Reached Specialization status in 29 different Oracle solutions (v. target of 20), including several in which Hitachi stands alone among Diamond Partners.

o   Reached Advanced Specialization status in 6 Oracle solution areas (v. target of 5): EBS Financials, EBS Supply Chain, Siebel, Java, Database, and RAC.

·         Launched 15 new Oracle-sanctioned GTM offerings with client-facing decks, marketing datasheets, executive sponsors, and business plans.

·         Published four new customer success stories (videos and articles).

·         Scored high on Oracle’s client satisfaction survey (v. target of 6.5).

·         Staffed a dedicated Alliance & Sales Team.

·         Sponsored Oracle Open World (OOW, Sep 30-Oct 4) at the Grande level

Who are the other 10 Diamond partners?

·         The Big Three: Accenture, Deloitte, IBM.

·         Major offshore firms: Infosys, Tata, Wipro.

·         Other Global SIs: Cap Gemini, CSC, Fujitsu, Price Waterhouse Coopers

You would be surprised to see even some big players in Oracle in India and abroad are not in this elite list to name a few HCL, Cognizant, Mahindra Satyam and Tech Mahindra etc.

What does this mean for our current and prospective clients?

·         Clients wanting to partner with a top-tier Oracle consultancy, now have Oracle’s official word that Hitachi belongs to that group.

·         The proven quality of Hitachi’s consulting services, as evidenced by Oracle’s client satisfaction survey results, Hitachi references, and the dramatically expanded pool of Certified Consultants at Hitachi means clients can confidently expect world-class implementations delivered by Hitachi.

·         Through Hitachi, clients will enjoy fast track access to broad and senior Oracle resources who may be helpful in their Oracle deployments.

·         Clients will benefit from enhanced intellectual property developed by Hitachi as part of the path to Diamond status.

·         Via this newly cast relationship, Hitachi will expand its already leading co-development role with Oracle, 

·         The Hitachi-Oracle Alliance now enjoys a dedicated team of GTM resources assigned on either side, further solidifying the current Alliance strength and ability to invest in new innovations that will address clients’ needs.

What does this mean to Oracle?

·         Oracle will enjoy expanded choice of top-tier partners as represented by the elite group of Diamond Partners (now 11).

·         The proven quality of Hitachi’s consulting services, as evidenced by Oracle’s client satisfaction survey results, Hitachi references, and the dramatically expanded pool of Certified Consultants at Hitachi means Oracle can safely recommend Hitachi to their customers and be confident in the expected implementation quality.

·         Among its Diamond Partners, Oracle now has in Hitachi the only firm officially Specialized in Value Chain Planning (Demantra) and Value Chain Execution (OTM), a 6th Advanced Specialized firm in each EBS SCM and Siebel (and just the 3rd to have both), and the 3rd firm Specialized in EBS HCM [note: “Specialized” means meeting minimum threshold on Certified Consultants, References, and Alliance Revenue; 

·     Oracle now has access to an expanded portfolio of robust GTM Offerings, via their “Oracle Initiative Management (OIM)” system: already, Our Offerings have been formally approved. These offerings are unique combinations of Oracle and Hitachi IP that differentiate each firm and provide clear value to our clients.

·         The improved integration between the various Hitachi operating companies participating in the Hitachi-Oracle Alliance will deliver more opportunities for unique and innovative solutions that leverage Hitachi IP (note: Hitachi is the 4th largest filer of new patents in the US every year).

·         The Oracle field can take advantage of incremental Market Development Funds being invested by Oracle corporate to support field-level GTM with Hitachi.

·         The allocation of a full-time Hitachi Alliance Team at Oracle delivers the resources needed to be responsive to Oracle field demand for more GTM programs with Hitachi.

I want to quote what Troy Lutes, our Global Oracle Practice leader said about this accomplishment  as an end note …“Think about this: there are 21,000 firms are registered with OPN…and only 11 have Diamond status. Each of you should walk a little taller around your clients today, and should be very proud of this monumental achievement.”

Thank you

DC*

Dinesh Chandrasekar