Unica Corporation

Unica is a brand within HCL software, a part of HCL Technologies comprising multiple Enterprise Marketing Management components. It was formerly a brand within IBM. HCL acquired Unica as a part of $1.8 billion purchase of select IBM products in 2019.[1][2][3]

Unica Corporation
HCL Subsidiary
IndustryEnterprise Marketing Management (EMM)
Founded1992 by Yuchun Lee, Ruby Kennedy and David Cheung
Headquarters
Waltham, MA
Key people
Yuchun Lee, CEO
Kevin Shone, CFO
ProductsUnica Campaign
Unica CustomerInsight
Unica Detect
Unica Interact
Unica Leads
Unica Marketing Operations
Unica NetInsight
Unica NetTracker
Unica PredictiveInsight
Websitehttp://www.unica.com

When purchased by IBM, Unica was managed by Yuchun Lee and had around 500 employees.[4]

HCL has made significant investments in the Unica platform with over 2000+ enhancements to date, moved Unica from an on-premises only platform to a premises agnostic Cloud Native platform, removed 3rd party software dependancies with Open Source support, and exponentially increased the integration capabilities with over 500+ Rest APIs and the introduction of Unica Link delivering a low code, open, point and click integration framework  for all your 3rd party touchpoints and martech.

With the V12.1 release, HCL also added an Open API Journey creation, monitoring, and management tool that allows Rest API connectivity to any application, data source or system across an enterprise. An integrated deployment solution was added to support digital engagement which was designed to be up to 20% faster than other competing solutions.

History

Unica was founded in 1992 by Yuchun Lee, Ruby Kennedy and David Cheung. The company is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, with additional offices in the US, Australia, France, Germany, India, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, and the UK. They primarily serve the financial services, insurance and healthcare, business-to-business services, retail, automotive, technology, telecommunications, travel and hospitality, media and publishing, energy, and pharmaceuticals markets.

In August 2010, IBM announced the intent to acquire Unica for $480M. In Oct 2010 the IBM Aquisition of Unica was completed. Unica was a significant base product which formed IBM's 2010-2013 Smarter Commerce got market strategy delivering a wholistic enterprise solution. Post acquisition, the Unica portfolio was focused to Unica Campaign, Unica Campaign Optimization, Unica Marketing Operations, and Unica Interact. The Unica suite also retain Detect and Distributed Marketing for legacy customers.

In December 2018, HCL Technologies announced the intent to acquire Unica including other IBM products such as, Appscan for secure application development, BigFix for secure device management, Portal for digital experience, Notes & Domino for email and low-code rapid application development, Commerce for omni-channel eCommerce, and Connections for workstream collaboration. HCL Technologies had been engaged with IBM in an intellectual property partnership where HCL provided services, support, and development previously for some of these solutions. In July 2019, HCL Technologies completed the acquisition of Unica and other noted products and subsequently formed a completely new division named HCL Software to manage the new software portfolio.

As of July 2019 the Unica solution module names were streamlined and renamed to: Unica Campaign - Precision customer targeting at scale Unica Plan - Enterprise grade marketing management Unica Interact - Real time personalization in milli seconds Unica Optimize - Contact optimization for offers and channels

HCL Software has invested heavily in the Unica platform since 2019 with one major release and several minor releases per year. To date, HCL Software has released a V11.0, V11.1, V12.0 and upcoming V12.1. In the first year, Unica added over 2000 enhancements, 500+ Rest APIs, moved the previously on-premises only Unica to solution to a Cloud Native Dockerized solution also supporting Open Source. With the July 2020 release, Unica will add three new products; Deliver, Journey, and Link which will be the largest expansion of the Unica platform in over 20 years. In addition, Unica will now be licensed as a wholistic platform instead of the individual product modules.

As of July 2020 the Unica marketing solution platform includes the below modules: Unica Campaign - Precision customer targeting at scale Unica Plan - Enterprise grade marketing management Unica Interact - Real time personalization in milli seconds 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

Resources

http://unica.com - HCL Software Official Unica Website

http://live.unica.com - HCL Software Official UnicaLive Digital Events Platform

http://support.unica.com - HCL Software Official Unica Support Page

http://blog.unica.com - HCL Software Official Unica Blog

https://www.linkedin.com/company/hclunica/ - HCL Software Official Unica Linkedin Page

UNICA V12.0 PRECISION MARKETING@SCALE

General Availability - April 2020

UNICA MARKETING AUTOMATION PLATFORM INCLUDES:

UNICA CAMPAIGN, UNICA INTERACT, UNICA OPTIMIZE, UNICA PLAN

V12.0 Updates

Over 2000+ Enhancements since the close of the acquisition.

Now Cloud Native platform with Open Source Support

500+ REST APIs, 90+ Native Reports, a new UI/UX, and 200+ platform enhancements

UNICA V12.1 PRECISION MARKETING@SCALE

General Availability - July 2020

UNICA MARKETING AUTOMATION PLATFORM INCLUDES:

UNICA JOURNEY, DELIVER, LINK, CAMPAIGN, UNICA INTERACT, UNICA OPTIMIZE, UNICA PLAN

V12.1 Updates

Builds on the Cloud Native platform with a large expansion of integration capabilities.

Over 300+ additional enhancements including three new major modules - JOURNEY, DELIVER, & LINK

Unica Goal-based Marketing QuickStart offering, whereby customers can define and start meeting their marketing goals in as little as 30 days.

Simplified pricing model - To help customers capitalize on the power of an integrated cloud-native marketing platform, HCL is introducing the Unica Power Pack, which lets customers get access to the entire Unica platform, using a simplified, transparent, consumption-based pricing model.

OVERVIEW

The HCL Software Unica Suite is an enterprise class, marketing platform that delivers precision marketing at scale. Designed from ground up for marketers and powered by AI, it empowers marketing automation across a wide variety of outbound and inbound channels – direct mail, email, website, call center, IVR mobile, ATM, Kiosk, POS and much more. Unica is a premises-agnostic, cloud native platform and can be deployed through Docker framework or natively.

This leading marketing automation solution is highly scalable and can handle any volume of customer records and transactions while providing a single marketing system of record to implement omni-channel marketing strategies. It simplifies the execution of complex marketing programs with a business-friendly user interface and experience and seamlessly integrates with home grown and third-party martech applications

BENEFITS:

·      Deliver Better Customer Experience: Delight your customer through optimal campaigns, personalization strategies and channel engagement for each customer built on profiling, captured behaviors and dispositions.

·      Agile Campaign Execution: Take advantage of time sensitive market opportunities by streamlining the campaign execution process across all your internal stakeholders in one platform.        

·      Rich Segmentation: Increase your marketing effectiveness through deeper levels of customer segmentation allowing for more targeted call to actions.  

·      Real-Time Personalization: Show your customers you understand them individually by delivering personalized offers across all your outbound and inbound engagement channels in real-time.

·      Universal Data Connectivity: Tap directly into your customer data anywhere and in any format in its native environment eliminating expensive data consolidation, errors and ETL effort.

·      Cloud Native platform: Deploy in minutes, upgrade in hours and deploy anywhere - on-prem, cloud, or hybrid environments – with Cloud Native capabilities like Docker and Kubernetes, a rich set of micro-services, and open source support.  


UNICA V12.1 MARKETING AUTOMATION PLATFORM INCLUDES:

UNICA JOURNEY, DELIVER, LINK, CAMPAIGN, UNICA INTERACT, UNICA OPTIMIZE, UNICA PLAN


JOURNEY – Goal-Based Marketing

Goal based orchestration to visualize, create, execute & measure personalized omnichannel customer experiences.

FEATURES:

  • Goal driven Experiences: Define goals for your customer experience and easily adjust your journeys in real time to achieve them.
  • Orchestration Canvas: Craft and visualize your entire customer Journey across channels/touchpoints and events with a sleek and intuitive canvas.
  • Always on Engagement: Completely automated execution that is in sync with every step of your customer’s brand engagement.
  • Real-Time Insights: Understand your customer behaviour with insights that update real-time.
  • Unlimited Touchpoints: Leverage included touchpoints for digital channels or craft a custom touchpoint to seamlessly orchestrate journeys across your ecosystem.

Dynamic Data Framework: Consume interaction data from multiple sources in variety of formats for increased flexibility and simplified integration. (File, API, Landing Pages etc.).

BENEFITS:

·       Goal-based Marketing: Make changes to customer journeys on the fly to meet marketing KPI goals and customer expectations

  • Shorten your Customer Conversion Cycle:  Increased conversion with timely next best actions that are in synch with customer behaviour & aligned to goals
  • Increased Brand Loyalty: Strengthen your brand with relevant automated journeys that increase retention and share of wallet.
  • Amplified Omni Channel Engagement: Deliver a consistent customer inbound and outbound experience across any channel with native integration for Unica Campaign Interact and Deliver.
  • Engage in the Moment: Never miss the opportunity to delight your customers with relevant experiences.
  • Lower Marketing TCO: Reduced TCO with automated flows and plug-and-play integration to your martech ecosystem through Unica Link’s open and flexible framework.

DELIVER - Reliable & scalable messaging

Seamlessly integrated digital messaging solution, providing timely and personalized communications.

FEATURES:

  • Digital Messaging at Scale:  Deliver high volume personalized digital messages with an architecture purpose built for performance and reliability.JOURNEY – Goal-Based Marketing
  • Digital Channel Coverage: Seamlessly integrate with digital messaging touchpoints, including: email, real-time, SMS and more.

·       Unified Omni Channel Experience: Leverage the powerful context and continuity offered by the Unica Marketing Platform’s system of record.

  • Flexible Communication Automation: Provides powerful lights-out productivity tools to automate complex experiences plus the flexibility to efficiently support simple ad hoc campaigns.JOURNEY – Goal-Based Marketing
  • Powerful Email & Landing Page Analysis: Precise application of personalization rules with a quick and easy preview of data-driven messages and landing pages.
  • Intuitive A/B Testing: Quickly configure and conduct A/B testing to determine the most effective email design and message content for your audience.
  • Insightful Reports & Analytics: Out-of-the-box analytics and engagement insights of  marketing results.

BENEFITS:

  • Faster Overall Send Time: Deployment to inbox delivery up to 20% faster.
  • Maximize Customer Engagement:  Drive higher opens, clicks and conversion with a sophisticated rules engines and advanced functionality.JOURNEY – Goal-Based Marketing
  • Leading Industry Expertise:  Access to key industry experts for in-depth deliverability monitoring, analysis and support.JOURNEY – Goal-Based Marketing
  • Streamlined Operations: Reduced dependency on IT maintenance and integration and consolidation to one deployment solution.JOURNEY – Goal-Based Marketing
  • Increased Efficiency: Increase marketing resource efficiency with powerful lights out automation.JOURNEY – Goal-Based Marketing

A low code, open, point and click integration framework  for all your 3rd party touchpoints and martech.

FEATURES:

  • Point & Click Marketer Function: With an intuitive and a simplified user interface, marketers can connect campaigns or customer journeys in few clicks without the exposure to the underlying mechanics and mappings between applications.
  • Open API Driven Framework: Standard and simplified tooling that powers rapid development and deployment of 3rd party integrations
  • Persona Based Features: Caters to the needs of different user personas like developers, administrators, and marketers with granular access controls and applicable functions and interface.
  • Service Assurance: Provides robust integration and execution between applications including authentication, throttling and retry strategies.
  • Connectors: Available connectors for leading Email/SMS/CRM vendors plus the flexibility to customize for individual requirements.

BENEFITS:

  • Reduced TCO: Streamline the maintenance and extensibility of your integrations with open low code framework & automation.
  • Improved ROI: Derive more ROI from your entire MarTech ecosystem including Unica and 3rd party applications by seamlessly orchestrating customer experiences across touchpoints.
  • Omni-Channel Data: Integrate across data silos to unify the customer experience.
  • Agility in Time to Market: Accelerate the time to deploy integrations for new marketing projects & initiatives and reduce reliance on IT.

CAMPAIGN - Precision Customer Targeting at Scale

Advanced campaign management solution that delivers customer targeting at scale with powerful segmentation capabilities for outbound, multi-channel, multi-wave batch campaign execution and tracking.

FEATURES:

·      Audience Segmentation: Leverage a powerful, flexible, easy-to-use flowchart user interface to manage audience selection, exclusions, segmentation and assignment of personalized offers.

·      Centralized Offer Management: Centralize and standardize the creation and management of offers and associate content with the flexibility and agility to personalize at scale.

·      Automated List Generation and Output Formatting: Schedule list pulls, multiple campaign waves, access external data repositories from multiple sources, and output contact in nearly limitless formats.

·      Contact Data Management: Manage large contact databases with great efficiency and execute campaigns with velocity while ensuring compliance for GDPR/CCPA.

·      Interaction History & Attribution: Close the loop on your customer or prospect engagement with attribution that is built on a rich and complete interaction history including contacts made, offers presented, response actions along with campaign details.

·      Reporting and Analysis: Gain powerful insights and perform ROI, lift analysis through standard out of the box campaign reports. With an open data model, any third-party reporting or analysis tool can also tap into the campaign data.

BENEFITS:

·      Increased Response Rates: Execute targeted campaigns with velocity and increase your response rates by 10% – 50%.

·      Shorter Campaign Cycles: Reduce your time to launch campaigns and decrease customer acquisition cost by 25% – 75%.

·      Strong Brand Value & Loyalty: Strengthen loyalty and retention with targeted campaigns that increase lift and your overall campaign ROI by 15% – 30%.

INTERACT – Real-Time Personalization in Milli Seconds

Sophisticated real time interaction solution to personalize customer experience and determine the next best action for customer engagement across various channels such as websites, call centers, point-of-sales, ATM’s, kiosks and more.

FEATURES:

·      Leading Edge Personalization:  Engage known and anonymous visitors, consider behaviors and current activity patterns, and personalize interactions leveraging both online and offline data, including in-depth historical knowledge of customers to deliver targeted call to actions such as cross-sell offers, editorial content, service options, and coordinated banner messages.

·      Intelligent Offer Arbitration: The acute and insightful combination of marketer personalization strategy and inbuilt cognitive learning helps you to recognize the right time and best offer for every customer.

·      Omni Channel Coverage: Plugs into any customer touchpoint: website, call center, kiosk, point-of-sale, ATM and bridges customer engagement through delivery of personalized offers across channels without losing context and continuity.

·      Insightful Reports and Analytics: Delivers accurate marketing performance analysis, channel activity insights, campaign strategy inventories and deployment auditing— all intended to improve managerial oversight and marketing results.

BENEFITS:

·      Real-time Personalization at Scale:  Scales to meet your growth with powerful performance throughput: 100,000s of concurrent sessions with response times in few milli seconds.

·      Increased Response Rates:  Deep personalization and advanced analytics maximize the relevancy of messages presented during live interactions, increasing response rates.

·      Improved Customer Experience: Personalizing the experience of interacting with your brand real time can have a major positive impact on perception and loyalty.

·      Transform your Inbound Channels: Targeted marketing adds to the ROI of websites, call centers and other inbound channels originally built for operational reasons.

·      Align your Inbound & Outbound Channels: Connects and coordinates inbound marketing with outbound campaigns, on the same platform sharing audience data, offers and dispositions.

PLAN - Enterprise Grade Marketing Management

Comprehensive marketing resource management solution that provides a collaborative environment for end to end planning, execution and management of your marketing initiatives.

FEATURES:

·      Operations Management: Manage your marketing plans and programs with rich meta data, calendaring and dashboards. Collaborate and coordinate across projects, resources and teams with workflows and approvals.

·      Financial Management: Allocate and track top-down or bottom up marketing spend across plans, programs and projects and manage all aspects of marketing expenses from cost center definition to purchase order generation to invoice processing.

·      Asset Management: Manage the creation, distribution, and approval of the organization’s digital assets in a secure asset library with powerful searching, graphical views, and version control.

·      Campaign Planning: Transform briefs to meta data that flows seamlessly between planning and campaign execution. Define and approve targets cells, and review cell counts for targeting.

·      Offer Lifecycle Management: Create and organize simple to complex call to actions end to end for your campaigns and manage them through review and approval cycles.

BENEFITS:

·      Increased Productivity: Streamline your marketing process, ensure compliance, implement best practices and standardize your planning data.

·      Reduced Cycle Time: With integrated data flows and efficient UI/UX, launch marketing campaigns and programs, getting them into market faster.

·      Lower Marketing Costs: Gain greater visibility and control over marketing budgets and expenses.

·      Improved Collaboration: Bring together marketing teams and process enabling greater cooperation and higher efficiency.

·      Better Marketing Results: Through dashboards, analytics, and calendars achieve greater insight, oversight and management of all aspects of marketing.

OPTIMIZE - Contact Optimization for Offers & Channels

Superior campaign optimization solution to determine the optimal contact strategy for each customer across time, offers, channels and multiple marketing campaigns.

FEATURES:

·      Customer Optimization: With limited opportunities to communicate with your customers, determine what offers to give to which customers while managing contact fatigue.

·      Offer Optimization: Determine which customers get what offers, when you have only a limited number to distribute.

·      Time Optimization: Ensure offers don’t conflict with each other, offers are not repeated and offers are prioritized.

·      Budget Optimization: Determine how to allocate your budget across different campaigns, offers, or customers.

·      Channel Capacity Optimization: With fixed channel capacity, identify which channels to use to communicate with which customers and when.

·      Goal Based Optimization: Score offers for your customer based on marketing objectives such as potential value, revenue, profit, exposure, probability of response and more.

BENEFITS:

·      Best Brand Experience: Deliver a delightful contact experience for your customers, based on interaction history, offer details, channel preferences, time frame, business constraints and rules and marketing objectives.

·       Improved Customer Loyalty:  Respect customer privacy and preferences and drive customer relationship to the next level.

·      Optimal Messaging: Minimize customer contact fatigue by mathematically determining the best communication for each customer.

·      Optimized Resource Usage: Optimize usage of limited budget, channel capacity, and inventory resources.

·      Increased ROI: Maximize marketing profitability and ROI through improved response rates by sending the best offers to each customer.

References

  1. "HCL Technologies to Acquire Select IBM Software Products for $1.8B | HCL Technologies". www.hcltech.com. Retrieved 2019-08-14.
  2. Pramanik, Ayan (2019-07-01). "HCL completes acquisition of IBM products". The Economic Times. Retrieved 2019-08-14.
  3. "HCL Technologies Announces close of Acquisition of select IBM products | HCL Technologies". www.hcltech.com. Retrieved 2019-08-14.
  4. "IBM Completes Acquisition of Unica Corporation". IBM. 6 October 2010. Retrieved 27 January 2016.

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