This blog is part of a series of posts exploring the different companies that have looked for or are currently looking for Customer Success Managers. Learn more about your potential employers, see if their values align with yours and whether you can see yourself working there. This is the last one for this series. For this one last one, I’ll be talking about a company that’s had a big impact in my career to date: Oracle.
Oracle – One company to acquire them all
Indeed, my own experience with Oracle wouldn’t have come to be if it wasn’t for the fact that it had acquired Textura, the payments management company that I had started working at in 2014. I remember walking into my office one morning, my colleagues crowding around a computer, watching the screen intently.
“Did you hear?” Ryan (a colleague of mine) asked. I shook my head. “We’re been acquired.” Over the next three or so years, I learned what it was like working in one of the largest tech companies in the world. It’s definitely set me up for my career so far and I feel that many people could stand to gain a lot from being able to work in a company like Oracle.
The Services Themselves
Oracle is huge. You’ll notice that I’ve actually selected a particular industry – construction and engineering – for the screenshot above. That’s because it’s the Business Unit I worked in at Oracle and what I know best. Obviously, choose the industry you’re most drawn to, but I’ll talk about some of the products and services that the Construction and Engineering Global Business Unit (CEGBU, Oracle loves their acronyms!) provides. Here are the main products that are part of the CEGBU suite. I’ll look at two today.
Aconex was Oracle’s last acquisition to complete the piece de resistance in the construction and engineering industry. It was Australia’s first big tech unicorn, paving the way for others when tech was not a big thing. Aconex is a tool that facilitates collaboration amongst construction teams by enabling documents to be better shared and tracked, all tied together with an audit trail.
Primavera Cloud is one of the earliest acquisitions from Oracle for the CEGBU suite. It’s a scheduling and risk management tool, allowing teams to sync up on decisions that have to be made so that everyone has visibility over it all. The problem of “you don’t know what you don’t know” is a thing of the past with Primavera.
Job Description Example
This screenshot is from a CSM role for Oracle CEGBU. Let’s have a look into it further below…
Let’s go through each of the dot points:
- You can nurture and build strong relationships, making sure users user the CEGBU tools to their maximum potential,
- Become the trusted advisor that your customers go to within your organisation,
- Maintain a contact cadence with your customer so that they are aware of the most recent changes and upgrades to products,
- Nip risks in the bud so that good relationships don’t go bad,
- Keep an eye on customer health and take steps to improve it if it’s heading in the wrong direction,
- Keep up to date on product releases so you can share these details with customers as well,
- Be a team player and share your perspectives to help improve CS performance,
- Be the Voice of the Customer and push for mutually beneficial scenarios,
- Pull in the right people at the right time if escalation is required,
- Work remotely and in person.
What They Care About
Despite being a larger company, their benefits don’t seem as generous as other fresher faces in tech. Having worked there though, their health cover is one of the highest in the tech industry and their career paths are pretty well documented. People who work at Oracle tend to stay there for years and years. They can try different jobs and have a long career without ever leaving the company. It suits people who want security, but also want variety – a formidable combination in this day and age!