Unifying Data with Oracle Unity CDP

As we begin to get closer and closer to year’s end, marketers are setting their eyes on the next one and focusing on the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead. As we approach 2024, some of the biggest opportunities rely on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and next best action strategies. Marketers are focused on personalization on a grand scale and truly elevating their customers’ experiences. For retailers, this means bridging the gap between online behavior and in-store dynamics, offering consumers a unified brand experience. This all requires the ability to unify data that, traditionally, has been stored across a variety of technologies and platforms. Without a CDP like Oracle Unity, it becomes harder and harder for marketers to provide rich, personalized experiences, often demanded from today’s consumer.

This focus on hyper-personalization, one-to-one communication, and consumer-driven engagement poses a whole new set of challenges. To do any of these things well requires a solid data foundation that assumes the elimination of siloed information. Gone are the days where marketers can store online and offline behavioral and transactional data separately. In order to create these enhanced personalized experiences, data from across the marketing ecosystem must be aggregated, unified, and turned into tangible customer profiles that can be harnessed for marketing communication and ongoing analytics.

This is where the importance of a Customer Data Platform (CDP), such as Oracle Unity, shines. As Sarah Scott describes in her blog post, Breaking Down Data Silos: Oracle’s Unity CDP as a Catalyst for Seamless Customer Experiences, “Oracle’s Unity CDP acts as a central hub that integrates disparate data sources, enabling marketers to create seamless customer journeys, whether the customer is engaging through a digital channel or a brick-and-mortar store. By bringing together data from online and offline interactions, Oracle’s Unity CDP provides marketers with a unified view of their customer’s behavior, preferences, and purchase history.”

If you’re interested in Oracle Unity CDP to eliminate data silos, you likely already know the “what” and “why” of data integration, but you may be wondering about the “how.” It’s here where the stigma of the unknown can cause hesitation, or even worse, lack of action. Understanding more about Unity’s data flow process may help to eliminate any such concerns. 

Unity’s robust data ingestion process combined with its identity stitching engine gives you the ability to create unified customer experiences, intense personalization, and recommendations faster and easier than you may realize. While utilizing all of Unity’s capabilities in full force requires a phased approach, it all starts with data management, ingestion, and unification.

Oracle Unity Data Ingestion

Understanding Unity’s data workflow will not only remove any stigma around complexity, but it will also set a strong foundation for data planning. Unity ingests data in three different ways: ingest jobs, streaming API, and real-time API.

Ingest Jobs

Unity’s Ingest jobs give you the ability to import data from various sources directly into Unity. Data can then be mapped properly within your data model and transformed as needed. Sources available for data ingestion include Oracle CX Sales, Eloqua, and Secure FTP. Data imported into Unity from an ingest job goes into a staging area. Running the Data Warehouse Job within Unity migrates your data into the main Unity Data Model while also validating the data.

Streaming API

It’s also possible to ingest data through Unity’s Streaming API. With API, you can connect Unity with various source systems, sending data to Unity whenever certain actions, changes, registrations, etc. happen. Similar to ingest jobs, streaming API data is loaded into a staging environment first. Once the Data Warehouse Job runs, this data is migrated into the Unity data model.

Near Real-Time API

Using Unity’s Near Real-Time API import allows you to bring data directly into the Unity data model without running the Data Warehouse Job. This option is great when you need to bring time-sensitive data into Unity. There are a few caveats to using the Near Real-Time API, including the lack of certain validation and lookup capabilities, but it does offer you the flexibility to utilize data that requires transactional communication and real-time messaging. 

Oracle Unity Identity Stitching

Once loaded into the data model, Unity aggregates and matches data points to create master records and unified customer profiles. This is done through a series of internal jobs that run after data has been imported. 

Data Warehouse Job

Unity’s Data Warehouse Job runs after data has been ingested into Unity. Running this Job moves data from the staging area to Unity’s data warehouse. It also validates and processes the data, and it performs calculations on data density, address verification, and structures lookup values. These capabilities are not available with near real-time API data, since it does not go through the Data Warehouse Job. Once the Data Warehouse Job runs, the Identity Resolution Job unifies all of the data and creates master entities.

Identity Resolution Job

Unity’s Identity Resolution Job creates master entities of records through a series of actions such as deduplication, merging, and promotion. Customer data is brought together across multiple sources to create one master record that provides a full view of customer data. The output of this aggregation of data culminates in master records within Unity. These master records exist for Customers, Accounts, and Products.

Customer 360 Job

Unity’s Customer 360 Job matches attribute data against the unique master records created by the Identity Resolution Job to create full Customer Profiles. In this way, Unity helps you collate and marry disparate data to create one full view of the customer. Bringing your data together in this manner allows you to augment your segmentation, personalization, and real-time communication. It also gives you the ability to analyze your customers, their behavior, and the ROI of your campaigns in ways nearly impossible without it. 

Unity’s Profile Explorer allows you to view and search for Customer Profiles. Profile Explorer can be used within Unity, standalone, or embedded within a CRM or similar system. For those of you familiar with Eloqua’s Profiler tool, you can think of Unity Profile Explorer as a very similar sales and/or customer service enablement tool but with more customer data, not just marketing activities. 

Conclusion

Now that you know how Oracle Unity brings data together, it’s likely easier to see how it can benefit your overall marketing initiatives. Unity integrates seamlessly with a number of technologies, most notably marketing automation tools such as Oracle Eloqua, Oracle Responsys, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud to name a few. These connections allow you to seamlessly market to distinct segments and profiles across multiple channels. This is where the true power of Unity takes hold, allowing marketers to create the unified customer experiences that would be nearly impossible with siloed data.

Interested in learning more or need help with your unique data structure? Contact us, we’re always here to help.