Oracle issues internet CRM apps challenge

Manila, 17 November 1999 (Manila Bulletin) - In an attempt to cut through the market confusion and hype, Oracle Corp, a provider of e-business solutions, has announced the Customer Relationship Management Challenge, which identifies the criteria companies need for effective customer relationship management (CRM). With this challenge, Oracle, which was recently awarded Intelligent Enterprise's ''Readers Choice Award'' for the leading customer relationship management software, looks poised to set the standard by which CRM solutions will be measured.

"Companies are justifiably concerned by the past week's acquisitions of niche CRM vendors," said Mark Barrenechea, senior vice president, CRM Products Division, Oracle Corporation. "The CRM market is consolidating and we feel it is our duty to help the market understand what it can and should demand from a CRM solution."

Oracle poses the following challenges to aspiring e-businesses:

• Release your business from obsolete client/server technology; let the Internet change the way you do business - or let your competitors force you out of business.
• Save your sales team valuable time and frustration spent upgrading their CRM software - give them a Web browser and a URL instead.
• Use the global reach of the Internet to expand your markets far beyond what's possible without it - and make new friends and customers in far-away places.
• Enable your partners, customers and employees to collaborate on the sales cycle - and leverage the benefits of coordinated selling.
• get your sales force to drive sales transactions to the web - and compensate them for it. Compile accurate global sales forecasts in real time - and manage the expectations of your team, executives, and investors.
• Let yourself believe in the possibility of having all your marketing, sales and customer service information in a single location - or continue to spend precious time and money maintaining it on little servers everywhere.
• Allow your customers to contact you with service requests or sales orders via telephone, email, or the Web - all at once, if they so choose.
• Let creation and deployment of a Webbased marketing campaign become a four-hour process - not a four-week process. Know at all times which of your customers are most profitable to your business - and which are at greatest risk of defection.
• Arm your sales team with critical customer information via their handheld devices and smart phones - and liberate them from the encumbrances of heavy laptops.
• Motivate your sales force by enabling them to instantly determine their compensation on a deal - and stimulate the local economy as they rush out and spend it.
• Give your service reps accurate, real-time information about the availability of needed products - and bolster customer confidence and satisfaction in the process.

  "In order to reap the ultimate benefits of a holistic CRM system, companies must be freed from the constraints put on them by obsolete client server technology," continued Barrenechea. "Integrated, Internet CRM systems are the only way to achieve the kind of competitive advantages e-businesses need to survive and win. In the end, companies that don't make the transition to e-business, will be out of business."