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HCL Unica

HCL Unica

Overview

What is HCL Unica?

HCL Unica (acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in late 2018) is a suite of enterprise marketing management tools including marketing automation with cross-channel campaign management, budgeting and forecasting, project workflow management, asset management, brand management and spend management.

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Pricing

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What is HCL Unica?

HCL Unica (acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in late 2018) is a suite of enterprise marketing management tools including marketing automation with cross-channel campaign management, budgeting and forecasting, project workflow management, asset management, brand management and spend management.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.ibm.com/us…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Marketing Cloud is an AI-powered, cloud-based digital marketing platform within the Salesforce Customer 360 ecosystem. Marketers can segment their audience, deliver personalized messages, track campaign performance, engage leads and accounts, and optimize strategies based on real-time insights.

What is Wrike?

Wrike is a project management and collaboration software. This solution connects tasks, discussions, and emails to the user’s project plan. Wrike is optimized for agile workflows and aims to help resolve data silos, poor visibility into work status, and missed deadlines and project failures.

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Product Demos

HCL Unica Discover - B2C Cart Abandonment Demo Pack

YouTube
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Product Details

What is HCL Unica?

HCL Unica (acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in late 2018) is a suite of enterprise marketing management (EMM) software that include marketing automation with cross-channel campaign management, along with budgeting and forecasting, project workflow management, asset management, brand management and spend management. Unica Campaign, Unica Marketing Operations, and Unica Interact are the foremost products in the suite.

The product is geared towards large B2C customers, and is available as either a Saas or an on-premise offering.

HCL Unica Features

  • Supported: End-to-end campaign management
  • Supported: Campaign measurement and reporting
  • Supported: Deeper customer relationships

HCL Unica Screenshots

Screenshot of End-to-end campaign managementScreenshot of Faster campaign creation

HCL Unica Video

Learn more about UNICA: https://hclsw.co/unica-page Personalization, customer journeys and delivering messages in any channel are top of mind for CMOs today. In this video, we show how Unica is tackling CMO's biggest marketing challenges. #UNICA #UNICAIsBack

HCL Unica Integrations

  • Aprimo
  • Oracle Siebel Enterprise Marketing Suite (discontinued)

HCL Unica Competitors

HCL Unica Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

HCL Unica (acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in late 2018) is a suite of enterprise marketing management tools including marketing automation with cross-channel campaign management, budgeting and forecasting, project workflow management, asset management, brand management and spend management.

Adobe Marketing Cloud, Aprimo, and Uptempo are common alternatives for HCL Unica.

The most common users of HCL Unica are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(54)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Versatile Selection Process: Users have found the selection process in the software to be versatile, allowing for both simple merge/purge processes and the use of raw SQL queries. This flexibility has been appreciated by multiple reviewers.

Efficient Campaign Flowchart: The campaign flowchart feature has been highly praised by users for its efficiency in managing multiple channels and campaigns within a single flowchart. This capability has been mentioned by several reviewers as a standout feature of the software.

Contact History Management: The Contact History feature has received positive feedback from users as it facilitates effective management of contact points with customers or prospects. It also allows for providing compliance information or responding to complaints. Multiple reviewers have expressed appreciation for this valuable functionality.

Lack of Data Visualization: Some users have mentioned that IBM Campaign lacks data visualization within its module, making it difficult to interpret and analyze campaign data efficiently. This limitation can hinder their ability to make informed decisions based on the data.

Limited Integration with Outbound Channels: Several reviewers have expressed the need for greater integration of real-time capabilities with outbound channels like email, SMS, Facebook Fanpage, and Twitter DM broadcasts. They feel that this lack of integration limits their ability to effectively engage with customers across multiple channels in a timely manner.

Complexity in Transporting Projects: Users have reported difficulties in transporting projects between development, test, and production environments. This can lead to inconsistencies and errors during the campaign management process. Simplifying the process of transferring projects between environments would greatly improve efficiency and reduce potential issues.

Based on user reviews, the following recommendations are commonly given for using Unica:

  1. Seek help from IBM or an approved consultant for training and migration to ensure a smoother transition.

  2. Ensure proper data gathering and training before moving into UAT and go-live to maximize the potential of Unica.

  3. Prepare for growing pains with training and implementation by investing in appropriate resources and consultants if needed.

These recommendations highlight the importance of seeking professional assistance, data accuracy, thorough training, and being prepared for challenges when using Unica as a marketing automation tool.

Reviews

(1-1 of 1)
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After 4 years, still not convinced ...

Rating: 4 out of 10
May 07, 2014
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
HCL Unica
4 years of experience
It is used by 2 departements.
It is used to "program" campaigns. 2/3 of the campaigns are one shot, 1/3 is recurrent. 1/2 are commercial campaigns, 1/2 are administrative campaigns to inform clients of p.e. changes in interest rates and so on.
  • The most powerful in Unica are the audience swaps. They are very helpful for cleaning up audiences like households, if one of the members of a household has a product, you can easily exclude the whole audience.
  • When working with segments in a flow, this goes really fast.
  • The use of templates is easy and helps to standardise the working process.
  • The mappings of tables can be different in every campaign
I think it is wel suited for a business with a lot of one on one relations in the database. For example a supermarket that sells products to a client and gives a reduction on that product. It is nice if the selection process is not to complex and does not involve to many calculations. It is also nice if it is very clear what you want to follow up.

In our environment we have lots of many-to-many relations. for example one product is held by more then one client. And that client might have more of those products with other clients. These kind of situation demands for a lot of calculations with derived fields(*), and there things go far too slow. Unica is probably not such a good solution for us, because our environment is too complex, and so is to process of creating the selection, we often have to change things in the selection flows. Because of the complexity it is difficult to see what the flow is exactly doing afterwoods, it also takes to much time to modify existing campaigns.

The interface is not handy to work with, if you have long lists of variables, of tables or derived fields(*) you have to scroll through trough them, you can not really search them or reorder them. You can not drag and drop fields or other objects like derived fields in the flow, what would be easy if you have to make frequent changes to the proces flow.

When you copy objects something the content of the object changes because the links with other objects or lost.

(*) derived field: field to calculate something
  • We are only using Unica for the selection part of campaigns, I think things go twice as slow as before when we were working in SAS, but it is difficult to compare, as the people doing the work in SAS had all up to 20 years of experience and those working with Unica now are all new people. The people who liked to do the campaign selections with SAS did not like to work with UNICA, so they left, and with them also their experience.
The consultants of UNICA where very good at their job, fast and efficient. They always had a very convincing answer to our questions.
When we worked in SAS we used macros before to perform all the tasks in the selection process. When things changed on a global level we modified the macro programs, and all the campaigns written with the macros automatically changed. This is impossible in Unica. We use templates to create the campaigns, but if the templates change, the old campaigns still run the older versions. With about 500 campaigns a year, it is impossible the update all the running campaigns manually with the newer version of a template.

If there are changes in data sources, it is really difficult to find out with unica campaigns are affected, and very time consuming to make the changes.

In SAS we it was possible to automatically document all our programs, so that we could easily search that documentation for the use of variables, files, calculations and so on, in UNICA this is all done manually.
14
selections for sending emails, letters. Providing calls to the internal and external call centers, and to the survey agencies we work with.
2
It people to install new release and resolve really technical issues.
  • Selections for the call centers
  • Sending email messages
  • Selections for surveys
  • none
  • none
Yes
SAS base, the decision was made on group level, their was no really a need for it in our branch, we were very well organised.
  • Product Reputation
  • Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
The consultants who demonstrated the product where very good and convincing.
I think we did right at that time. But the timing was not right. We should have waited a bit longer.
  • Vendor implemented
  • Implemented in-house
Yes
3 phases:
- technical test fase
- user test fase
- production test fase
  • The design of the underlying datamart
  • The difficulties of setting up response tracking
- We had to rebuild a part of the datamart afterwards to tighten up and simplify the selection process. But as it was too time consuming to rebuild all the existing campaigns, we no run campaigns on different versions of the datamart.

- The response tracking of the campaigns never worked out well, it was impossible to implement a direct response where there is a link between the lead and the response in our operational process.
I didn't use the Unica support since it is with IBM, only before.
Yes
It took a long time to resolve
Not really, or exceptionally bad support (no experience with IBM, only in the period before IBM bought UNICA)
  • If you don't make complex selections, the interface is simple to use.
  • With few explanations, you can make simple selections.
  • the use of date functions in selections
  • the right way of mapping the used tables seems to be difficult for beginning user
I think it is easy to use, if you don't have to do to complex selections.
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