Oracle Corp. is putting software as a service at the forefront of its cloud strategy as it kicks off its annual Oracle OpenWorld conference today in San Francisco with a number of important updates to its cloud application portfolio.

The updates leverage Oracle’s continuing investments in areas such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, with a general focus on making life easier for business workers across a wide spectrum of industries, the company said.

For example, Oracle’s Enterprise Resource Planning and Enterprise Performance Management clouds have both gained new “intelligent process automation” capabilities that help to automate many of the mundane tasks performed by enterprise workers. Central to this update is a new technique called rules-based processing, which “elevates” robotic process automation to a much higher level, Oracle Cloud Senior Vice President Juergen Lindner said in a briefing.

The capabilities are being used to power a new “expense reporting assistant,” which is basically a chatbot for improving control and audit compliance by processing expenses with greater efficiency and accuracy, while also simplifying expense reporting for users. Oracle ERP Cloud also gains intelligent payment functionality among other new features, while EPM Cloud is leveraging AI to uncover “hard to spot data patterns” in order to dig up new business insights.

The idea is that by automating these kinds of business processes, organizations are better able to capture insights which can be used to embrace new business models. “We see the necessity to embrace new business models, in particular subscriptions,” Lindner said.

The company is making lots of noise about the AI capabilities in its Human Capital Management Cloud too. Oracle HCM is used by organizations to more effectively manage their talent pools and find new job candidates and the updates are aimed at making these processes simpler, smarter and more agile, the company said.

Some of the new features include an HR-trained chatbot designed to provide feedback to employees’ commonly asked questions, integration with LinkedIn to help HCM workers better source new workers and a new strategic workforce planning tool that allows organizations to assess their current talent pools, see where they have skills gaps and generally optimize their human resources.

With the updates, Oracle said, it’s trying to reimagine how customers manage their human resource functions. “We have come a long way” in HCM, Lindner said.

The Oracle Data Cloud has also made some great strides in using AI to help marketing pros at small and medium sized businesses, the company said. Data Cloud is adding a new data solution for small and medium-sized businesses that enables what Oracle calls “account-based marketing.” The idea is to provide marketers at smaller firms with the same kind of tools used for outreach that are available to larger enterprises.

The new tool is based on Oracle’s existing business-to-business audience marketplace and leverages its ID Graph technology to help marketers build digital audiences that match their needs based on their specified criteria.

“This SMB data solution levels the playing field for B2B marketers so they can identify, reach, and manage their sales and marketing programs for both large organizations and the smaller businesses who can drive their growth,” Niraj Deo, vice president for product and data strategy at Oracle Data Cloud, said in a statement.

On the customer experience front, meanwhile, Oracle is enhancing data management with a new tool called Oracle CX Unity, which is designed to help organizations better understand their customer’s expectations. The idea with this one is simple: It takes all of the data about each customers, from offline, online and third-party sources, and uses this to present a “single, dynamic view” of each one.

Oracle said it’s moving on from the outdated concept of a “linear customer journey,” using technologies such as machine learning to better understand each interaction and deliver a better overall experience for each customer. “It represents a unique approach in handling customer data to provide a complete customer experience,” Lindner said.

Finally, Oracle is using AI to help its customers create more predictable revenue streams via its new Subscription Management service. It handles three important tasks, including managing billings and revenue recognition, and providing a more complete picture of each customer’s purchasing behavior.

The wide-ranging updates to Oracle’s cloud applications show that the company is maintaining a strong focus on driving digital business transformation, said Wikibon analyst James Kobielus. Key to this, as always, are its continued innovations in areas such as AI, machine learning and digital assistants, he added.

“Oracle has incorporated these technologies into new tools that automate business functions more intelligently while augmenting the productivity of the business professionals responsible for a wide range of front-office and back-end functions,” Kobielus said. “This latest round of cloud application innovations will help its customers enhance business agility, speed innovation, grow revenues, cut costs, boost customer satisfaction, recruit and retain talent, and deliver predictive insights throughout the enterprise.”

Photo: Håkan Dahlström/Flickr