They say it takes 3 miracles to reach sainthood, plus a little luck. Well, this past week spent at Oracle Open World, I had a chance to witness 3 “miracle-like” events that I want to share with you. Now, I wouldn’t put them on par with parting a sea, or healing the sick, but they were miracle-like themselves.
Miracle 1 – The Event
Imagine an already bustling city such as San Francisco, bustling even more, streets cordoned off, thousands of people running to and fro, from hotels to the Moscone center, to events, to meetings. It was quite the sight. I sat on a wall outside of Moscone West for 5 minutes just to take everything in, to experience it from the perspective of a bystander, not a participant. It gave me a new appreciation for all of the hard work, coordination that goes into an event like this. The event itself was flawless. Organization, content, speakers, food, media, lodging. And to pull it off with rave review…well, quite a miracle in itself. Special thanks to all the folks at Oracle and Perficient’s very own Mariana Huber and team for putting together a terrific event.
Miracle 2 – The Shift
It was clear coming out of the Oracle Open World event this week that there is a dramatic shift taking place at Oracle. The making of Oracle into a provider of customer experience solutions, not just a technology provider. This shift has been a work in progress for the past 2-3 years. It’s not easy to turn around a ship as big as Oracle, maybe a miracle in itself, but based on the focus, discussions and content I saw this week, the customer experience discussion is taking center stage. It all culminated this week with a deep focus on the customer experience. An entire floor of Moscone west was designated a “CX Zone”, where customers, partners, practitioners of customer experience enjoyed presentations and participated in customer journey mapping sessions. To cap it off, customer experience was showcased on the main stage of the event with a thought provoking presentation by Michael Dell and Oracle’s David Vap. Customer experience was showcased this past week, and it had a bit of everything for everybody; Executive, operations and technicians. The shift is refreshing for many reasons. It opens an entirely new and deep dialogue with businesses on how to solve business objectives and challenges by focusing on customers, and the entire stack of Oracle solutions coupled with partner services that can be brought to bear.
Let me point you to 2 interesting pieces to back this up. The first was a LinkedIn post posted by Oracle President Mark Hurd. ….http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130925135423-178173598-why-ceos-must-become-customer-experience-evangelists
The second was a recent “Perficient Perspective” I published just last week.
Miracle 3 – The Comeback
Just in case you missed the America’s Cup event this week, let me just tell you that Team Oracle USA took the cup. Team Oracle sailed 8 flawless, consecutive races to take the cup from a New Zealand team that was all but celebrating. I put this win on par with historic wins in sports history like the 1980 USA Olympic hockey team beating the Soviets. A friend of my family, Mike Eruzione captained that 1980 Hockey team and he and that team displayed the same level of confidence, desire to win and overcome all the odds that Team Oracle had this past week. Truly a miracle and one that added to the excitement of Oracle Open World this week. For a time, everyone at Open World sat perched and cheering as they watched Team Oracle on the big screens throughout Moscone center. When Team Oracle finally crossed the finish line, cheers and jubilation erupted in downtown San Francisco. “USA!, USA!, USA!” could be heard. It was electric. It made you proud to be an American, and proud to be part of the Oracle event.
Well, if it takes 3 miracles plus a lot of luck to be canonized, this past week was a huge step in that process.
