Oracle CRM R16 Taking Ownership of Social Media Space
November 12, 2008 3:50 am BI Market, BI Solutions, on Demand BIJust yesterday, I also attended a presentation by Oracle on their upcoming CRM Release 16. Gone are the days when CRM was just a contact management tool with a few nice pipeline management tools. Such tools failed to live up to expectations, being largely dependent upon the entry of data by sales persons. This entry rarely happened, and the value of the tool declined in popularity. Just as web services reinvigorated ASP hosted applications into the realm of on demand Software as a Service, so too has web 2.0 spurned a new perspective on CRM tools.
Oracle have embraced the social networking world as not so much a nice to have – but accepting that this is the way the new generations communicate. Whilst many organizations still shudder at the thought of lost productivity due to personal indulgence in instant messaging tools and social networking sites; those who dared to indulge their staff have been surprised that the change in productivity has in many cases been on the positive side of the curve, and not the downside.
From an application value-add perspective, one cannot fully appreciate how social media features will integrate into business processes. But with a free 30-day trial on offer, Oracle are providing a place to play, without pay. Often, the mere fact that the solution ‘appeals’ to the normal habits and values of the users will help overcome the adoption issues around early CRM. Just how much this will be viewed as another ‘build and they will come’ is anyone’s guess, but Oracle must be given credit for jumping ahead of the curve and taking ownership of social media CRM. I for one certainly use sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn to find out about corporate personnel and mutual connections that may help smooth a business conversation – with Oracle CRM, such links are fully embedded into the CRM tool. Such linking can also include referral contact information and networks.
Another gem was the shared media library. For those of you who regularly build PPT presentations, you know how agonisingly time consuming they can be to put together. Using the media library in a Windows Vista looking environment, the user can identify presentations by subject using social tagging – then simply extract slides from multiple presentations to form the foundation of a new presentation in a tighter niche. This can then be shared back to the media pool.
Being a strong advocate of software as a service tools, the concern that such tools would be limited in functionality has not borne true. Earlier versions provided merely a basic skeleton of functionality and limited dashboard and reporting configuration. Not so with todays versions. Oracle CRM has added core BI functionality along with new functionality to support Prospecting, Campaigns and Media sharing.
At the communications interface, the mobile assistant currently deployed on Blackberry is being fully optimised to take advantage of the innovative media features of iPhone.
Oracles offering has also expanded at the infrastructure layer. Overcoming a common complaint in early SaaS models, where performance may be compromised by the running of long scripts by another party sharing the same server, Oracle has expanded the SaaS model into the dedicated server model. Even further, should a client feel they have sufficient security and QoS onsite, CRM R16 can be rolled out in the client environment.
So whilst the expanded functionality makes CRM R16 a very good tool for small businesses, it has not forgotten the large corporates with unique compliance needs.
This application actually looks fun! And I will certainly be eagerly awaiting case studies with feedback on how these new integrated social features perform. I expect some surprisingly positive results.
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