One of my new years resolutions is not to start everything on Oracle with “I never would have thought I’d be saying this but Oracle….” and then saying something good about them. They’ve now been good for a long time and don’t really (at least when it comes to CRM) need the qualifer. But, then this is still 2008, so… if this were a year and a half ago, I wouldn’t have made Oracle one of my top “companies to watch for 2009″ because I had nothing but contempt for them, but I have to tell you, despite some remaining weaknesses, Oracle might turn into the company to beat in 2009 when it comes to CRM 2.0 or as they insist on calling it, Social CRM. They have the clearest vision in the industry, thanks to the leadership of Anthony Lye, an underestimated industry intellectual and have an extraordinary CRM team to back that vision up ( n.b. FYI, I’m not saying this about any other division of the company at this juncture. We are speaking strictly CRM here. I still have serious problems with Oracle’s overall culture, though there are some signs it’s changing.). Their crystalline vision is built around a mix of Enterprise 2.0/Social CRM. That means it’s driven by “the company’s response to the customer controlling the conversation” and the impact of consumer thinking as it penetrates the business environment. They have a road map that adheres to the vision. They understand the value of thought leadership, not just market share. Their Social CRM applications are well thought out and they’ve made some serious progress with them. As of now, they have 3 that are at least maturing, if not fully mature. Sales Prospector, a social sales analysis that takes internal and external factors into account to determine the probable success chances of a deal based on both past customer success and external events and information pulled in. This is their highest risk application, because it depends on actual results with specific numbers that can be easily seen for being accurate or not. Sales Library, my personal favorite, uses social tools and user generated content like comments and ratings to pick out the best guess presentations and documents that a sales person would need to take to a prospect or client to close a sale. They also have another slightly more amorphous application called Sales Campaign. In addition, they are making huge progress in conjunction with L’Oreal on a more consumer focused social CRM product. It would allow mobile sales and mobile “someone like me” rankings, ratings and reviews of products that a customer might have an interest in. This is an iPhone application, a mobile platform that Oracle has a surprising and strong commitment to and that they nearly stand alone in terms of depth. At this stage, their Blackberry commitment isn’t that much to speak of. Finally, the undeniable. Siebel is just simply a flagship product for CRM and always has been and with their acquisition of Siebel, the flagship becomes Oracle’s. The recently announced Siebel 8.1.1 takes Siebel a magnitude forward. If you want to read more about that, and Oracle Social CRM for Sales “gadgets, read here. Oracle is one of the three contenders for next year’s top spot - if a “top spot” exists - and might even be the favorite at this point. Their announced going forward efforts will be in the mobile and on demand realms, so we’ll see how they deliver on that in 2009. The weaknesses? They have two. Their customer service applications from the social side are nothing to speak of at this point, though they have a commitment to changing that. Its just a matter of time before we see customer service apps that are meaningful from them. In the interim, they have a relationship to Helpstream, another company to watch, that probably has the paradigm customer service 2.0 social CRM application (to throw all the cliches into one line), which is at least an interim until they get their own or whatever Oracle does there. Their biggest detriment is the bigger company’s sales driven culture. I’ve seen little evidence of a universal customer driven corporate culture there, though the CRM group’s singular culture is highly customer driven. If the company wins out - well…I’ll have to break my 2009 resolution. But there are signs that the CRM group, especially now that we are in a recession, will influence the company more than it will be influenced. I hope so, because the commitment, passion and production of Oracle’s CRM applications promises nothing but goodness in the year ahead.
Source:blogs.zdnet.com/crm
