We Blog CRM

SugarCRM Inc., provider of commercial open source customer relationship management, today announced plans to expand support for customers of the Oracle Unbreakable Linux Support Program across all SugarCRM solutions.

Based on the growing community and customer demand, SugarCRM and Oracle can now provide customers with a single fully supported solution. It’s a big move by firms who’ve been tight for a while: SugarCRM has been a member of the Oracle open source partnership for the last two years.

SugarCRM Inc., provider of commercial open source customer relationship management, today announced plans to expand support for customers of the Oracle Unbreakable Linux Support Program across all SugarCRM solutions.

Based on the growing community and customer demand, SugarCRM and Oracle can now provide customers with a single fully supported solution. It’s a big move by firms who’ve been tight for a while: SugarCRM has been a member of the Oracle open source partnership for the last two years.

SugarCRM Inc., provider of commercial open source customer relationship management, today announced plans to expand support for customers of the Oracle Unbreakable Linux Support Program across all SugarCRM solutions.

Based on the growing community and customer demand, SugarCRM and Oracle can now provide customers with a single fully supported solution. It’s a big move by firms who’ve been tight for a while: SugarCRM has been a member of the Oracle open source partnership for the last two years.

Nucleus Research, a provider of information technology research and advisory services, today released its Siebel CRM On Demand Guidebook.

The guidebook summarizes experiences of both recent and long-time customers of Oracle’s Siebel CRM On Demand in an effort to present best practices in order to maximize value from Siebel CRM On Demand.

The book also promises tips ‘n’ tricks for preventing common CRM pitfalls such as identifying internal “CRM skeptics” and removing the “old school” CRM mindset.

(What, CRM already has an old school?)

The CRM industry’s longest-awaited event of the year – well, in Oracle’s estimation, anyway – took place yesterday with the release of Oracle’s Siebel CRM On Demand 14. The big company promises the requisite advanced customization capabilities and comprehensive integration to increase end-user productivity.

Siebel CRM On Demand provides embedded analytics and a pre-built data warehouse to drive real-time decision making; a built-in virtual call center to support call agents; and industry editions.

Though little concrete information beyond “within the next twelve months” was given by company PR for an actual release date on ol’ number 14, the price has been set at $70 per user per month.

And press material as always reminds us that “Oracle is the world’s largest enterprise software company.”

From the Collaborate ‘07: Technology and Applications for the Oracle Community show going down in Las Vega$ this week comes news from – who else? – Oracle.

The Oracle Application Integration Architecture, an open standards-based platform for business process management across Oracle, third-party and custom applications was released, presumably to provide a little “ooh” and “aah” to carry through the rest of the show.

Getting on board the SaaS ship (of a sort), Oracle will deliver pre-built integrations across Oracle ERP, CRM and industry applications using a business process execution language-based platform. These industry-specific programs are called “Process Integration Packs” (No acronym provided here – can we call them PIPs?) and seek to provide pre-integrated business flows across Oracle’s portfolio of applications. The PIPs leverage the Oracle Fusion Middleware SOA Suite.

PIPs currently available include Oracle’s Siebel CRM On Demand Integration Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite, designed to support the opportunity-to-quote process, and Oracle’s Siebel CRM Integration Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite Order Management, which promises support for the order-to-cash process.

Subsequent PIP releases planned include Oracle’s Siebel CRM Integration Pack for i-flex Flexcube Account Originations, an integrated front-to-back-office banking solution; Oracle’s Siebel Call Center Integration Pack for Oracle Adverse Event Reporting System, intended to support a complete closed-loop “adverse event” (gotta love the euphemism there) and complaint (ah, that’s better) solution; Siebel CRM Trade Promotions and Deductions Integration Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite, which is expected to provide a closed-loop trade promotional process for consumer goods companies; Communications Integration Packs for Siebel CRM, Oracle Billing and Revenue Management and Oracle Financials for the concept-to-launch and order-to-cash processes; Multi-Order Channel Management Integration Pack for Siebel CRM, Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Retail; Siebel CRM On Demand Integration Pack for Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne; Oracle Transportation Management Integration Pack for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, to support rate and route shopping during sales order entry; and Oracle’s PeopleSoft Financials Integration Pack for Oracle Financial Services Accounting Hub, which is promised to allow users in the financial services industry to consolidate information from back-office systems into the Oracle Financial Services Accounting Hub and PeopleSoft General Ledger.

OneNeck IT Services was able to take pride in the announcement of achieving “Certified Oracle Partner” status in ERP hosting services. OneNeck stated along with the news that the quasi-mysterious “Black Book of Outsourcing” had rated the firm the number one ERP management outsourcer.

“OneNeck’s ability to be a single service provider for complex and critical systems implementation, integration, and hosting has sparked significant growth in our relationship with Oracle,” said colorfully named OneNeck CEO Chuck Vermillion.

Oracle representatives have announced Oracle Siebel wireless support for Blackberry smartphones from Research In Motion.

Oracle’s Siebel Wireless for BlackBerry seek to assist enterprises in extending CRM data to executives, sales teams and field services engineers equipped with BlackBerry smartphones in order to conduct real-time communications and transactions.

In addition to having access to corporate email, phone and other applications, users can manage customer interaction, service tasks, assess critical corporate data and collaborate with other team members. Users can push notifications or data to any user via the BlackBerry push-based email, voice and SMS text messaging channels.

Research In Motion is a designer, manufacturer and marketer of wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Founded in 1984 and based in Waterloo, Ontario, RIM operates offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

On-demand sales compensation management software provider Xactly Corporation has announced its entry into the Oracle partner network (or OPN). Xactly will be integrating Oracle’s Siebel CRM On Demand and Xactly’s Xactly Incent sales compensation management products.

Under terms of the CRM On Demand Go-to-Market initiative under OPN, Xactly is promised resources and support to develop the integration. Specific efforts are focused on delivery of single sign-on between the two applications; seamless data transfer between both applications; and integration via Xactly’s “Incentive Estimator.”

Xactly lays claim to status as “the first and only company completely focused on delivering a 100 percent on-demand sales compensation management solution.”

Oracle today announced specific enhancements to Siebel CRM 8 for the life sciences industry.

As part of Siebel CRM 8, Siebel Life Sciences introduces new capabilities designed to optimize territory realignments and clinical trial activities. In addition, this release, which was delivered as part of Oracle’s "Applications Unlimited" program, offers users a superior ownership experience with a choice of multiple deployment options, ease of manageability and low-cost integration.

Some specific modules touted with Siebel CRM 8 being touted by The Big Company include:

• Siebel Pharma, with new account contact targeting capabilities that allow users to treat the association between an account and a contact as a single entity. Enhancements also allow users to create departments within a hospital and affiliate physicians to them.

• Siebel Life Sciences Territory Management, just enhanced for broader territory definitions and simplifying administrative tasks.

• Siebel Clinical has been enhanced with regard to management of complex case report forms from a single site.

And Oracle, as company PR reminds us, is the world’s largest enterprise software company.