UNICA, the EMM Giant
Honestly saying when I heard the word UNICA for the very first time, to me, the name sounded like an adhesive glue brand like fevicol etc😂.
Well, the story doesn’t end here, when for the very first time I logged onto the official home page of this brilliant cloud-native tool, I was impressed by the plethora of industries it’s providing leverage. Key takeaway which I got
You can harness the power of UNICA to unleash the potential of precision marketing at scale.
Unica is a cloud-native, fully integrated enterprise marketing automation platform that provides precision marketing at scale. It can be regarded as the industry leader in the Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) arena. Covering a wide variety of industries including
Plethora of Industries
- Banking & Financial Institutions
- Healthcare & Insurance
- Travel & Hospitality
- Telecom
- Retail
- Consumer Product Goods
- Media & Entertainment
The Birth of UNICA
Unica came into being as a stand-alone software at Unica corporation in 1992.
Prelim features:
Following were the preliminary features:
Unica Campaign
Unica Customer Insight
Unica Detect
Unica Interact
Unica Leads
Unica Marketing Operations
Unica Net Insight
Unica Net Tracker
Unica Predictive Insight
Mighty Acquisitions
In August 2010, IBM announced the intent to acquire Unica for $480M & then it became a subsidiary of IBM. HCL acquired Unica as a part of a $1.8 billion acquisition for a line of products from IBM. Previously HCL & IBM had been heavily engaged in partnerships where HCL provided services, support, and development for the products in the deal including
IBM’s Line of Products
- Appscan for secure application development.
- BigFix for secure device management.
- Unica (on-premise) for marketing automation.
- Commerce (on-premise) for omni-channel eCommerce.
- Portal (on-premise) for digital experience.
- Notes & Domino for email and low-code rapid application development.
- Connections for workstream collaboration.
HCL Heavily Invested in UNICA
HCL heavily invested in the betterment of Unica and released several new & improved versions with over 2000 enhancements which was the largest expansion of the Unica platform ever in 20 years of history.
Latest Modules of Unica
As per the current version of Unica, it consists of following modules
Unica Campaign — Precision customer targeting at scale
Unica Plan — Enterprise-grade marketing management
Unica Interact — Real-time personalization in milliseconds
Unica Optimize — Contact optimization for offers and channels
Unica Journey — Goal-Based Customer Journeys
Unica Deliver — Reliable & scalable messaging
Unica Link — Fast & flexible integration platform
#UNICAisBACK, HCL Released Unica V12.0:
Announcing The New, Cloud Native Unica Platform — Precision Marketing At Scale
- #UNICAisBACK — This is the most comprehensive upgrade to Unica yet — with over 200 enhancements, 25 new features, 90+ native reports, 500+ REST APIs, and a new UI/UX.
- Improved Experience — Modern, intuitive user experience; Manage offers and content across all channels with Centralized Offer Manager; Get performance insights in real-time.
- Cloud Native — Deploy in minutes, upgrade in hours. Support on-prem, cloud, or hybrid environments — with Cloud Native capabilities like Docker and Kubernetes, a rich set of micro-services, and open source support (no WAS, DB2, Cognos dependency).
Darren Oberst, CVP and Head of HCL Software on the latest Unica Release
“This latest Unica version demonstrates to our current and future customers that HCL is committed to continually delivering the capabilities and support that they need to offer value to their customers and businesses, and this is just the beginning.”
Peculiar USPs
As an enterprise marketing management (EMM) suite, Unica delivers a marketing system of record, a solution through which marketers capture, record and manage marketing activity, information and assets, design campaigns and report on performance. Its software products can be licensed on a perpetual or subscription basis and can be deployed either at the customer’s location (on-premise deployment model) or managed as a remotely hosted solution by its marketing services providers (MSPs) or (on-demand software as a service SaaS deployment model).
Unica Key Strengths
- Unica is a leading global provider of Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) software designed to help businesses increase their revenues and improve the efficiency and measurability of their marketing operations.
- Unica marketing software focuses exclusively on the needs of marketing organizations and its solution addresses the principal functions of EMM including marketing and customer analytics, demand generation and marketing resource management.
- Unica marketing software is positioned in the visionaries quadrant of Gartner, Inc.’s “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Marketing Management, 2008.”
- Unica Leads provides the ability to better manage the qualification, enrichment, distribution, maturation, and feedback loop on leads — all resulting in increased closure rates and improved marketing ROI.
- Unica’s customer base has grown to over 500 worldwide, and its Suite has garnered top marks from Gartner, OVUM and Forrester Research.
HCL Unica Integrations
- Aprimo
- Oracle Siebel Enterprise Marketing Suite (discontinued)
HCL Unica Competitors
- Adobe Marketing Cloud
- Aprimo
- Uptempo
- Infor Marketing Resource Management
- SAS Marketing Operations Management
- Alterian Real-Time CX Platform (Chameleon)
- Salesforce Marketing Solutions
- Pega Platform
- Sales Manago
- Hubspot Marketing Solution
- Acoustic Campaign
Pros & Cons — Final Note!
Not to dig deeper into this discussion, but in a nutshell, with all the pros and cons Unica is being used in various industries and providing great leverage to businesses in their enterprise marketing management landscapes.
Signing off — till more on Unica!
