Reporting in Oracle Eloqua: Current World, Future World, Out of this World

In today’s data-driven landscape, more and more marketing teams are refining their reporting efforts and making strides towards data domination! In fact, you’ve probably already gained vast marketing reporting knowledge while reading Melissa’s Insight into Gaining Insights: Reporting in Oracle Eloqua blog.  Melissa did a great job describing the current reporting capabilities inside of Eloqua Insight today. So with that knowledge under out belts, it’s time to look into our reporting crystal ball and see what Eloqua has in store for our future marketing efforts.

Things are changing! But no need to fear, Eloqua reporting experts are here!

Current World: Overview of Reporting Today

Let’s start with a baseline of what’s available to all Eloqua users today. Eloqua’s current reporting engine, Insight, gives us out-of-the-box reports and dashboards that are considered best practices for reporting and measurement. Along with this native reporting tool comes the option to have an Analyzer license, which gives that licensed user the option to build custom reports (both graph and grid style) within the platform. The example dashboards below show the difference reports built in Analyzer vs. the standard out-of-the-box reports provided with Insight.

Insight Dashboard:

Analyzer Dashboard:

Future World: Facts About Future State 

Eloqua is transitioning from Insight to a new reporting solution called OBI (Oracle Business Intelligence). There are a few facts to know about what’s coming in order to prepare yourself and your team for the new adjustment. I know change can be scary but I will share everything I know in order to set you up for success when this new solution rolls out.

The number one thing to keep in mind is that customers have plenty of time to prepare for the change. The new reporting solution is currently released under the Controlled Availability program (to request access to this feature, head to My Oracle Support and create a service request), which started in the 482 release. I have been told there are around 100 clients on the new solution right now. Eloqua is beginning to ramp that process up and all net new customers are starting to use OBI only.  General Access will be released near the beginning of 2017, but no exact date has been announced.

Let’s get down to brass tacks. I was able to have a conversation with Thamina Christensen who oversees analytics and assets for the Oracle Eloqua product. The following information has been combined through my conversations with Thamina, the current Eloqua Help Center documentation, and access to the OBI solution itself.

The facts:

• OBI will not be a stand-alone tool; it will sit inside of Eloqua as a reporting layer just like Insight presently does.
• The reporting interface will look more modern but will run on top of the same data warehouse as Insight.
• Oracle is working to improve this current data structure, which should be rolling out in 2017.

Having worked with Insight for the past 3 years as a marketing analytics consultant at Relationship One, here is my perspective on the pros and cons of the OBI reporting solution for Eloqua.

Pros

Same data structure
More visibility into the data model
Significant amount of time to adjust to the new system
Talking to customers about best practices (100 in beta)
New/modern user interface
Thorough documentation
Same type of users as Insight: 
 Reporters and Analyzers
More/better support
More straightforward with what you can and can’t do with custom reporting
View and editable XML and SQL behind the scenes

Cons

Custom reports will need to be rebuilt
Limited beta preview
Limited data structure
Limited visualizations
Same out of the box reports
Same limited function/ calculations

One of the biggest takeaways from this list that I want to note is the fact that your current custom reports will need to be rebuilt in OBI. This is not an overall negative to the new reporting solution. It just means the transition may be a good time to strategically reevaluate your current reporting needs. I would recommend a report audit to minimize the time and effort placed on rebuilding the reports in the new platform. If you need assistance with defining an action plan, reach out to Relationship One. Our team of consultants are already working with clients on the transition.

Out of this World: Beyond Eloqua’s Native Reporting Options

Eloqua has some great reporting options, and as you now know, an improved solution coming in the near future. The question is; do we have other options when it comes to the vast amounts of data Eloqua stores for us? The answer is YES. Eloqua allows us to pull out our marketing automation data through its BULK API for custom analysis and reporting.

There are native and third party solutions available (my personal recommendation of course being Relationship One’s data transporters or Data Cloud platform) that can help you pull out your data, store it, and manipulate it.  Through the API, Relationship One’s solutions give you the ability to pull Activity, Contact, Account, Object Metadata (Campaign, Email Assets, etc.), and Custom Data Objects out of Eloqua to use in whatever capacity makes sense for your business requirements.

The next question is why? Why would I want to build reports and do analysis outside of the native tool itself? Great question! There are multiple benefits to having access to the raw data, such as:

1. Build your own data models
2. Blend Eloqua data with other data sources such as CRM, Social Media, and Finance
3. Build your own visualizations (see eye candy here) within a more robust business intelligence tool
4. Historical data-keeping

These are just a few of the benefits you and your team could achieve by having access to your Eloqua data.

In Summary

The road of reporting and analytics can be tricky to navigate, with basically unlimited options. As a marketer your best bet is to take a step back and think about all the questions you want/ need to be answered with your data. As I discussed above, Eloqua has some great options for reporting that will be changing for the better so now is a great time to think about your future reporting. Luckily Eloqua also provides ways for us to consume the raw data and manipulate it in more sophisticated ways than what is natively provided within the tool. With all these options don’t hesitate to reach out to us with questions. We are always here to help with all your marketing data needs.

If you have Eloqua and you need support with email strategy or building emails, please contact us!  We love helping companies transform their marketing automation.