Cloud computing is no longer the buzzword in tech circles; if folks at Oracle are to be believed, it is the new normal. The US enterprise software maker is pulling off a minor miracle of sorts with its cloud offerings.
By Sudhir Chowdhary
It is adapting and picking up customers rapidly and its cloud business is now worth $2 billion globally at an annualised rate. The cloud, it reckons, provides businesses, including those in India, rapid access to flexible and low cost IT resources.
Enterprises don’t need to make large upfront investments in hardware and software, and spend a lot of time managing their IT infrastructure—something that they used to do earlier. Instead, users are now able to access as many resources as they need, almost instantly, and only pay for what they use.
For evidence, take a look at online travel company, MakeMyTrip. Experiencing a growth of 150% year-on-year and playing in a highly competitive marketplace, MakeMyTrip implemented Oracle Service Cloud to provide a consistent experience to their customers while dramatically scaling up their business. MakeMyTrip selected Oracle Service Cloud, which includes Oracle RightNow, due to the strong out-of-the-box fit to their requirements as well as ease of integration and extensibility.
The ability to deliver proactive and highly personalised communications and gain real-time customer feedback and actionable insights helps MakeMyTrip target offerings with precision, driving even greater customer loyalty, increased efficiencies and higher revenues. Since the implementation of Oracle Service Cloud, MakeMyTrip has already reduced both agent training and reduced calls to their call centre by 50%, and the company’s Net Promoter Score, a measure of customer loyalty, has increased by double digits.
Kalpataru, one of India’s leading real estate development conglomerates, went live with Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud last year. At the time of implementation the company employed 1,200 personnel and was looking to ramp up its employee strength. To support this rapid talent acquisition, Kalpataru opted for Oracle HCM Cloud to help it hire high volumes of candidates quickly, build talent pools and streamline its recruiting process. With this deployment, Kalpataru’s HR division has been able to focus on strategic and developmental facets of HR that fulfill employee satisfaction and company goals, with Oracle HCM Cloud managing HR’s transactional aspects at the back end.
SRL Diagnostics, one of India’s largest pathology lab networks, has transformed its customer care operations by providing successful customer experiences across multiple communication channels leveraging Oracle Service Cloud. SRL Diagnostics had explored competitive solutions as well before zeroing in on Oracle Service Cloud. In their bid to provide a better and well-rounded customer experience, SRL Diagnostics needed a scalable future proof customer experience solution which could help them keep track of the customer service history and make the information accessible to their call centre staff.
Oracle Service Cloud delivered an enhanced and virtually seamless experience across various touch-points for SRL’s customers.
“We are upbeat about the momentum in cloud,” said Shailender Kumar, managing director, Oracle India. “The growth in this business is happening faster than our expectation. Oracle Cloud offers the broadest, most complete, and the most integrated set of cloud offerings in the industry. It’s a great time to be at Oracle and be part of the cloud business team—whether you are an employee, a customer, a developer or a partner,” he said.
Oracle’s software as a service (SaaS) business has seen the highest and fastest adoption rate till date, with platform as a service (Paas) close behind. This can be attributed to the company’s widely popular SaaS applications which are integrated with social, mobile, and analytic capabilities to help companies deliver the experiences they expect, the talent to succeed, and the performance the market demands, company officials said.
Over the last few years, Oracle has acquired several hundred cloud customers in India, all using different Oracle Cloud solutions. Nearly 50% of its SaaS customers are net new. The Oracle Customer Experience Cloud (Oracle CX Cloud), which includes Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle Service Cloud, Oracle Marketing Cloud, and Oracle Social Cloud, had the highest uptake in customer adoption and accounts for more than 50% of the company’s SaaS customer base.
Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud (Oracle HCM Cloud) customers constituted 32% of the SaaS customer base, while the remaining included customers using ERP in the cloud or PaaS, among others.
Oracle claims to be the world’s second largest SaaS company and the only cloud service provider to offer breadth and depth of cloud solutions across SaaS, PaaS, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and data as a service (DaaS). In India, Oracle Cloud solutions are helping Indian enterprises, large and midsize, to confidently embrace the cloud and use it to support their business transformation initiatives. Some of Oracle’s cloud customers include Birlasoft, iGate Global Solutions, Indiabulls, Kotak Life Insurance, Pearson India, PolicyBazaar.com, PVR Cinemas, Reliance Commercial Finance, Thomas Cook India among others.
Oracle has rolled out an aggressive strategy to grow its cloud business in India, including hiring a dedicated sales force to only sell cloud solutions; signing-up and training new partners to make them cloud ready; and leveraging Oracle’s renewed focus on geo-expansion and public sector areas to expand the market and drive growth for cloud. As part of its recruitment plans, Oracle will add 1,000 new employees to its sales force across Asia Pacific. Nearly 300 of this specialised sales force for cloud will be recruited in India. The expansion will help equip Oracle to drive growth and support demand for Oracle Cloud solutions across the region.
The bottom line is Oracle is laser-focused on being No. 1 in the cloud.