Five Ideas: CRM

In an economic downturn, businesses know they need to put even more focus on protecting their most important asset: Their customers. Find out how CRM helps keep customers happy.

“Customers are increasingly more and more in control. Organizations need to transform themselves from running their business inside-out to running their businesses outside-in. Businesses need to put their customers in the middle of their business, and build processes in and around their customer. The challenge, of course, is knowing who the customer is. CRM really provides a series of applications to crossmarketing, sales, and service to record not just the interaction that you have with customers but to establish a definition of that customer." —Anthony Lye, Senior VP of CRM

“Your business needs as well as your IT organization’s requirements should dictate the deployment decision. And for mid-sized and larger companies, using a combination of deployment models with tight data integration to ensure a consistent customer view may make the most sense. For example, an organization with a large centralized marketing operation as well as several geographically dispersed sales teams could benefit from an on-premises marketing and loyalty application that scales to meet their most demanding requirements, and an on-demand solution that is easy for salespeople to use and requires minimal IT support” —Steve Diamond, senior director of product marketing at Oracle

“When people first think of Oracle and CRM, they think of Siebel CRM. After all, Oracle did acquire Siebel Systems in 2006, and with it came the cachet of the Siebel CRM brand. However, the acquisition also came with a SaaS offering – now known as Oracle CRM On Demand – that was perhaps overshadowed by its better known sibling...Is Oracle committed to Oracle CRM On Demand? Absolutely. Since 2003 when it was first released, Oracle CRM On Demand has gone through 16 releases. Just this past year, we've seen Release 15, Release 16, and an array of complementary products like Gadgets and Mobile Sales Assistant for iPhone that work with Oracle CRM On Demand. And because it is offered on demand, customers can reap the benefits of each release without the need to upgrade."—Ruth Donahue, CRM product marketing

“We are actively improving the way we measure and analyze the activity of our sales force. The latest release of Oracle CRM On Demand gives us some amazing tools to accomplish this. We are now measuring all activity on an account. We measure all interactions, including face-to-face, for the entire extended sales force, including partners. And we measure and manage disposition rates of leads generated. We have a much better view into where, how, and why we can enter an account, what their landscape looks like, and how we can be most valuable. This, of course, positively affects efficiency and effectiveness."—David Bonnette, group vice president of North American sales at Oracle

“During this economic downturn, bulletproof financial arguments are needed to get funding for projects. In 2009, business cases must answer four critical questions: What are the business benefits? What is the impact on IT or project costs? Is future flexibility increased or decreased? How will risks be mitigated? CRM vendors will be challenged to provide clear and specific data about the business value their solutions can deliver."—Kathryn Haughton, CRM product marketing