Oracle Releases New Version of Sales-Side CRM Software

Oracle today announced release of the latest version of its sales-side customer relationship management (CRM) applications designed to help companies grow revenue by paving the way for effective enterprise selling.

The new versions of Oracle Sales, Oracle Marketing, Oracle Partner Relationship Management and Oracle e-Commerce 11i.10 provide technology to drive sales through improved enterprise alignment, effectiveness and collaboration.

“Selling is complex, and companies need to provide the entire network of organizations involved in the selling process — the marketing organization, the sales force, partners — with the right tools and information to make them successful,” said John Wookey, senior vice president of applications development for Oracle.

“With our latest release, Oracle can help companies drive enterprise selling by delivering software that provides access to enterprise information, align groups to work towards corporate objectives and enable collaboration between a companies’ network of relationships,” Wookey said.

Beyond Siloed Automation

“Oracle 11i.10 moves Oracle’s CRM applications into the next stage of CRM functionality — beyond siloed automation to enterprise business processes,” Mary Wardley, research vice president of CRM applications for IDC, said in a statement issued by Oracle.

Creating a model of effective enterprise selling means aligning groups within the enterprise to work together toward the same goals, providing parties involved with direct access to enterprise information and collaborating and coordinating selling efforts across all channels, Oracle said in its statement.

Enterprisewide alignment ensures groups within an organization work together to support corporate objectives through better communication, consistent information and incentives, Oracle explained.

In order to focus marketing and sales activities around common objectives, companies need to have consistent information shared between the sales and marketing departments, Oracle said.

Integrated Flow of Information

The new Oracle Audience Workbench, a component of Oracle Marketing 11i.10,spans both marketing and sales functions to provide an integrated flow of information.

Using the Workbench, a marketing or regional sales manager can access information on existing customers to identify the best upsell targets. Then, the Workbench provides the tools necessary for the creation of marketing campaigns and associated sales kits.

Sales kits and accompanying proposals can be automatically tracked as leads.

To ensure sales efforts align with organization goals, Oracle Incentive Compensation 11i.10 provides “projected compensation” capabilities. This helps sales management to design compensation plans that strategically support the overall sales goals of an organization, and sales representatives can see how selling various products or giving discounts will affect their compensation.

Integration between Oracle Quoting and Oracle Incentive Compensation provides reps with the visibility into how a sales quote would impact compensation.

Sales Alignment

The latest version of Oracle Territory Manager, a component of Oracle Sales, helps to provide for sales alignment between internal and partner sales organizations. New functionality in Oracle Territory Manager gives sales managers the ability to plan territory alignment for both direct and indirect sales forces and to analyze effectiveness of the effort.

Oracle Sales Coach, part of Oracle sales 11i.10, is designed to help increase the effectiveness of a sales rep by outlining the corporate methodology — the sales techniques and strategies — for the sales process.

Additionally, Oracle Sales Coach provides a system to automatically capture information about each step of the sales cycle, which enables easy analysis and reporting at the close of a deal.

Oracle Proposals helps a sales rep generate a proposal by pulling information from other systems across the enterprise, or from a central repository of proposal information, significantly reducing the time needed to generate an accurate,personalized proposal.

Oracle Quoting enables a sales rep to select terms and conditions from a comprehensive library allowing contracts to be automatically constructed based on current quote, order and negotiation information. Edited versions of contracts are tracked and approval of non-standard terms and conditions are automated withworkflow and audit trail functionality.

Arranging for Collaboration

Oracle Partner Management and Oracle iStore 11.i.10 helps provide for collaboration between a company’s direct sales force, customers and partners.

The Partner Dashboard, part of Oracle Partner Management 11i.10, provides tools for partners to perform all of their sell-side activities online and collaborate with channel managers. Partners can access co-op marketing funds, register dealsand make special pricing requests. Through integration with Oracle iStore, partners can now collaborate on sales opportunities, manage accounts, seek assistance, initiate returns and place repeat orders.

The Channel Manager Dashboard provides channel managers with a complete, personalized view of channel activity. Comprehensive key performance indicators display metrics such as total sales year-to-date, opportunity close rates, available and committed funds and open claims. With this information, channel managers can proactively identify channel trends and work with partners to improve selling success.