Steve Miranda, Oracle Executive Vice President of Applications Development, spoke about why having a complete suite of SaaS applications is important to your business and why it matters in today’s digital world.
Why the Complete Suite of SaaS Applications is Important to Your Business
Miranda explained that there are a lot of business process flows, which need an end-to-end transformation in order to effectively run your business. This will save your business money and costs in terms of data integration. It eliminates redundant and siloed information. More importantly, it enables you to have a customer-first focus.
With SaaS applications, customers can bid adieu to the notion of technical debt that many used to have to deal with in on-premises applications. In addition to the updates that you see visibly in the suite of SaaS applications, there are also invisible updates happening behind the scenes and keeping you up to date as well.
Miranda said that Oracle believes strongly that it has the greatest technology team in the world building its secure, reliable, fast technology.
Oracle’s AI Approach to SaaS Applications
Miranda went on to explain how the complete suite of SaaS applications comes together. Oracle utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to transform the way the applications work. It transforms them from applications that take and validate your data to applications that recommend the best action or automate the best action approach.
Oracle is combining your data, available third-party data, and machine learning to drive, recommend, and prioritize insights, measure the effectiveness of the insights based on what you do, and improve the algorithm going forward.
Debunking AI Myths
Miranda addressed the hype around AI and debunked five common myths that surround it. While AI is a big buzz word, it’s really just machine learning. It’s all about practical ways to take data and algorithms in order to give recommendations to improve the way you do business in a pragmatic, effective way.
AI Myth No. 1
Myth: AI requires a build-it-yourself approach.
Reality: Oracle’s AI strategy supports both buy and build.
AI Myth No. 2
Myth: AI delivers magical results right away.
Reality: Oracle has mapped out the fastest path to AI value.
AI Myth No. 3
Myth: AI doesn’t need people.
Reality: Oracle’s AI is based on human-machine interactions.
AI Myth No. 4
Myth: The more data the better.
Reality: Smart data makes applications better.
AI Myth No. 5
Myth: AI only needs data and models to succeed.
Reality: Oracle has industrialized ML so customers don’t have to.
Autonomous vs. Machine Learning-Driven
Miranda clarified that he was not talking about autonomous applications. Instead, they are machine learning-driven applications. You need people to make decisions about how you run your business most effectively. The machine learning helps people become more efficient and realize data insights that they might not have known before. However, you ultimately still have people at the wheel driving organizations and business decisions.
Oracle is building AI and ML features everywhere. They have been infused in multiples areas of Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain, Financial, and HR applications. Miranda explained that adding AI and ML into transactions makes them more effective.
By deploying AI and ML in its SaaS applications, Oracle has seen millions of real-world transactions through AI predictions. This allows Oracle to measure the effectiveness of them, tune the algorithms specific to customers, and improve the algorithms moving forward. Miranda said that the applications will only continue to get better and better.
Digital Assistants in SaaS Applications
One form of AI in the complete suite of SaaS applications comes through the use of digital assistants. Some call them bots or conversational UI. In the complete suite of SaaS applications, Oracle has introduced a single digital assistant that has multiple skills.
Whether your digital assistant communicates through SMS, HTML UI, Slack, or any other third-party voice or interface, it can support various interactions. As more and more customers deploy digital assistants in their SaaS applications, Oracle is getting more ideas and adding functionality very quickly.
When you combine the complete suite of SaaS applications, a large set of customer success stories, and solid technology like machine learning, digital assistants and the conversational UI will only continue to get better in the future.
Oracle’s No. 1 Priority: Customer Success
Miranda said that Oracle’s No. 1 priority by far is customer success. He said that Oracle achieves this through its consistency of delivery, quarterly updates, technology updates, reliability, and by listening to customers.
To hear more about why Steve Miranda says the complete suite of SaaS applications is important to your business, check out the video below.