Oracle Magazine - May/June 2012

RightNow Adds Service
to Oracle CX
Oracle unveils product roadmap for end-to-end
customer experience.

With the January 2012 acquisition of RightNow, Oracle added the industry’s leading cloud-based customer service solution to Oracle Public Cloud, a broad set of best-in-class, integrated services that provide customers with subscription-based, self-service access to Oracle Fusion Applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Database, and more—managed, hosted, and supported by Oracle.

The RightNow solutions join Oracle’s already-wide array of customer experience (CX) products—including Web presence, commerce, sales, marketing, search, knowledge, and social networking solutions—to make Oracle’s CX offerings “the best, most complete, and most advanced solution in the world,” said Oracle President Mark Hurd.

Hurd joined Greg Gianforte, RightNow CEO and founder; Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of product development at Oracle; and Wayne Huyard, senior vice president and general manager of Oracle’s new RightNow Global Business Unit, for a January 31 Webcast introducing the RightNow technology and previewing Oracle’s CX product roadmap. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service delivers “what we consider to be the best customer services technology in the market,” Hurd continued. “We have a very aggressive plan to invest in RightNow and build a stronger roadmap than ever before.”

THE CX IMPERATIVE

PHIL SALTONSTALL

With 86 percent of consumers choosing not to do business with a company because of a bad experience, according to RightNow’s annual survey, “CX is today’s primary business imperative,” said Gianforte following Hurd’s introduction. “Not embracing customer experience as a core strategy will leave you unable to compete, whether you sell to consumers

“Not embracing
customer
experience . . . will
leave you unable
to compete.”

—Greg Gianforte, CEO and Founder, RightNow

or other businesses.” RightNow has spent the last 14 years building a cloud-based solution that addresses this CX imperative, he added, with a suite that “empowers organizations to engage directly with customers through great social, Web, and contact center experiences.” The benefits, said Gianforte, typically include a 10 to 30 percent reduction in contact-center labor costs, increased customer retention, and accelerated customer acquisition.

CX doesn’t begin and end with customer services, Kurian emphasized, turning to the

Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President of Product Development, Oracle

solution roadmap. “Our fundamental vision is that consumers and business customers move through a closed-loop continuous lifecycle,” he explained, from when they perceive need for a product or service through the research, selection, purchase, receive, use, maintain, and recommend stages. “Customers require a simple, consistent, and amazing experience throughout the entire lifecycle, in all the channels through which they perceive the products, solutions, and services you are offering them,” said Kurian.

Kurian pointed out that many Oracle products already drive and support the customer lifecycle from needs assessment through the research, select, purchase, and receive phases, including Oracle’s Fatwire products (now part of the Oracle WebCenter family); Oracle Social Network; and Oracle’s Siebel Marketing, Oracle’s Endeca solutions, Oracle ATG Web Commerce, and Oracle Fusion Applications. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service completes the process with world-leading capabilities for managing the use, maintain, and recommend phases of the lifecycle, he said.

“Oracle and RightNow are a perfect pair,” Huyard concluded, providing “the unique capability of serving the entire customer lifecycle, from beginning to end, with understanding, integration, insights, and full-featured capability.” 