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SAP has rebutted a claim by Oracle that the latter is now the foremost CRM applications provider in America. SAP buttressed its claim by mentioning a recent report by Merril Lynch according to which SAP earned $ 968 million from tle sale of application licenses in the US for the year 2005, Oracle’s earnings for the same period were $ 558 million.

SAP was reacting to a claim by Oracle’s Larry Ellison that Oracle had emerged as the leader in CRM following its acquistion of Siebel. zdnet.co.uk says:

"Oracle can make no such claim for the current quarter, because SAP will not report its fourth quarter 2005 earnings until 25 January [next year]. We believe none of these leadership claims by Ellison can be substantiated," SAP noted in its statement.

Go to: SAP: Oracle leadership claims ‘not accurate at all’

SAP has launched a new version of its application Business One. The application integrates the operations of different functions such as sales, finance, purchase, inventory, and manufacturing. The latest version has greater compatibility with Microsoft Excel-based reporting tools and is also easier to install.

Business One is ideal for SMBs that wish to meet compliance requirements, move with the market trends, and link with their business partners. Improvements in the interface have made it more intuitive and customizable resulting in easier access to filtered information.

The new version comes with a Copy Express tool that enables users to copy custom reports, settings, etc from one installation to another. This results in easier deployment at another site, with fewer errors.

The new Business One offers multilanguage support which allows users to communicate with their business partners in the most suitable language. Thus, trade documents such as receipts, invoices, order forms, etc can be printed in a pre-selected language which would be the trading partner’s native language. The software is available for $ 3,750 per user for at least three users.

According to Robert Blumstein, research director of CRM, IDC, proper analysis of business data can lead to a ROI of around 112% in a very short time. BPM, SCM, and CRM are included in business analytics software. Customer data analysis provides businesses with greater insight and relevant data that can be used to offer service in a more consistent manner.

Spreadsheets are not meant for use in customer data analysis. An effective marketing campaign originates from accurate customer information. Incorrect information, for example wrong birthdates and email addresses, provided by customers can skew the customer clusters which can affect the decision making process.

Business analytics tools help to weed out inconsistent information. A business analytics software consists of applications that can track, analyze, and prepare models. The applications support both reporting and decision making processes. The software also includes tools for data warehousing, business intelligence, technical data analysis, etc. crm-daily.com says:

Packaged applications, on the other hand, fulfill a recognizable business process and use integrated data from multiple sources. "You can never entirely get rid of bad data," said Blumstein. "But there’s a lot you can do to improve it."

Go to: Analyzing Data To Boost the Bottom Line

Advanced search functions in online stores go a long way in facilitating search for browsing prospective customers. Retailers are looking to add these and other meaningful tools to their online stores in order to enhance the shopping experience. Web analytics help retailers to learn from the shopping habits of their customers and allow them to provide their services in a better manner.

Retailers are also concentrating on search engine optimization so as to benefit from being displayed prominently in searches. Since online shopping is largely about self-service, online stores are incorporating software that will enable users to track the status of their order in the supply chain and if need be they can chat up a service person live for clarifications and information. The Internet has established itself as a redoubtable sales channel and it provides companies with the opportunity to reach out to its customers, strengthen brand loyalty, and influence prospective customers.

Retailers prefer to adopt a packaged e-commerce platform and then proceed to incorporate functionalities on top of it as desired. An online store allows retailers to display their entire range without having to block either inventory or space. crm-daily.com says:

"Home Depot is no longer just a place to buy floor tiles, but rather a place where you go when you are planning tile projects. They have all this prepurchase content online, which enables their customers to feel more confident about the purchases they are making.

Go to: Living on the Edge of E-Commerce Tech

Salesforce.com, which provides On-demand CRM, is looking to build its business in the Asia-Pacific region in order to tap new markets. Stephen J. Russell, CEO and President, Salesforce.com has stated that the company aims to become a market leader in this region in the field of business and product delivery to customers. The Asia-Pacific regional hub has been established in Singapore and the company is set to expand its presence to other countries from there.

The company is looking toward the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) in Malaysia as a launchpad for growing its business. MSC companies in sectors such as telecom, manufacturing, technology, etc constitute an attractive target market for Salesforce.com.

Oracle has had a good second quarter, most of its costs are related to its acquistions, the number of subscribers for its software applications has risen by 36%. Income from subscriptions constitutes nearly half of the total sales. Subscriptions are a better deal than one-time purchases and the increase in number of subscribers implies that customers of PeopleSoft are continuing to work with Oracle.

However, Oracle will have to complete its Project Fusion satisfactorily as soon as possible if it is to continue to maintain the shareholder’s confidence, more so since its core database business has grown only 1% and 5% in the first and second quarters, respectively. crm-daily.com says:

"It’s going to be a very challenging year for the company," Rizzuto says, pointing to accelerating competition from German software colossus SAP AG.

Go to: Oracle’s Fusion Still Facing Hurdles

Oracle Corp has obtained clearance from the European Commission regarding its $ 5.85 billion purchase of Siebel Systems Inc. The Commission has stated that the acquisition will not have the deletrious effect of hurting healthy competition. Oracle’s acquisition of Siebel is partly to overtake SAP in the field of business applications software. According to the commission, the deal is unlikely to lead to a conglomerate effect and the existing customers of Siebel will continue to use the Siebel CRM software.

Oracle has undertaken five acquistion projects in the past one year and has spent around $ 17.6 billion. The acquistion could result in Oracle sreamlining its operations and many of the 5000-strong Siebel workforce could lose their job.

On 20 December, 2005, the Salesforce.com database crashed and customers were left without access to the on-demand CRM system for approximately six hours. The problem occured due an error in the database cluster on a global node. The company has four global nodes.

Salesforce.com services 18,700 cmpanies across the globe and it has around 351,000 subscribers. It handles sales, marketing, and customer-service data for its customers that include ADP, Dow Jones Newswires, Kaiser Permanente, etc.

According to Yankee Group, the outage has become a PR issues for the company and it also raises the question regarding the availability of redundancy capabilities so that if one server is unavailable, the data can be restored by switching over to another server.

SAP, which is one of the leading enterprise solutions providers, has released a technology blueprint referred to as the enterprise services architecture (ESA) that will enable companies to keep up with the changing trends in the information and communications technology (ICT) industry.

According to Adrian Chan, Senior Manager, SAP, businesses can use ESA as a guide for the deployment of web services for business processes and obtain value from the existing deployments by integrating SAP and non-SAP systems in the same architecture. The services gather data and programs from applications such as ERP and CRM and use these for the creation of new systems.

ESA is viewed by SAP as a technology strategy that will enable companies to evolve service-based business solutions. SAP’s ESA operates on the NetWeaver platform which also has applications like ERP, CRM, SCM, etc. All these applications are part of the mySAP Business Suite.

Customer Process Management is the process of integrating BPM and CRM technologies. The genesis of CPM can be traced to the efforts of companies to automate routine operational activities which led to the development of standalone BPM.

However, integrating disparate automated functionalities was not sufficient if companies wished to keep up with the ever rising consumer expectations. The objective of CPM is to ensure that processes take into account customer preferences and can be repeated to provide personalized and efficient service.

CPM allows businesses to optimize processes and cull the most relevant information from the CRM database such that a customer-facing process can be executed with maximum effectiveness. It also results in all departments in an enterprise operating on the same wavelength with respect to CRM. crm-daily.com says:

First and foremost, customer processes are dynamic. With conventional applications, the control to create and evolve processes resides with the IT department. The programming of processes and business rules takes time and resources, and competes with other IT priorities.

Go to: Discovering the Benefits of Customer Process Management