Digitization is changing the role of marketers in enterprises. Big Data and predictive analytics are creating osmosis between marketing and technology departments. IT teams are realizing that marketers can bring invaluable customer data to the table; likewise, marketers are injecting cutting-edge tech into their day-to-day work to hone customer relationships to unprecedented levels. As these departments talk to each other more and more, some companies want to go the whole hog and merge them into one.

Laura Ipsen, SVP and GM of Oracle Marketing Cloud, and Steve Krause, group VP of Product Management, Oracle Marketing Cloud, spoke to John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during Oracle OpenWorld 2016 about these issues and more.

Krause talked about how old lines between marketing and the rest of the enterprise are blurring. “That distinction is starting to fall away in the sense that marketing more and more is about being able to deliver the right customer experience based on that customers context, their intentions, their past data record,” he said.

He stated that smart companies realize those aren’t just the objectives of marketers, but of the business as a whole. “It turns out that why would anybody want that to stop at the organizational boundary called marketing? It doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Marketing merger

According to Ipsen, “Data’s not just part of marketing, it’s driving the future of modern marketing.” She said that as Big Data and marketing increasingly merge into one conversation, they too will merge within the same technology solutions.

“Looking at the architecture of our OMC [Oracle Marketing Cloud] stack, it’s really exciting to see how marketers can use these new tools beyond the transaction, but to deliver a new model of engagement with customers for the whole customer life cycle,” she stated.

Data drops in a bucket

Krause said OMC’s objective is to pull from all areas of the organization with the end goal of improving marketing. “Everybody’s got their own little piece of the customer — how do we go and connect those together?” he asked.

He went on to say that having an overseer is important to companies with little time to sift through a million vendors and their promises. “They’re saying, ‘Let’s have someone at the center who I can hold responsible, and then everyone else — talk to them.’ “

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Oracle OpenWorld.

(* Disclosure: Oracle and other companies sponsor some OpenWorld segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Oracle nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo by SiliconANGLE