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i3000 Offers Comprehensive Service and Support Selling Oracle CRM On Demand

The Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized program assures Oracle customers that they will be engaging with an insightful, knowledgeable Oracle partner with expertise in a defined product or industry area. For i3000, the OPN Specialized program has proven to be a great opportunity to differentiate within the service and support industry.

The Queensland, Australia-based Oracle Partner has achieved Oracle Specialized status in Oracle CRM On Demand and is now realizing the gains of an ever-growing list of satisfied clients. Thanks to in-depth expertise with Oracle CRM On Demand and broad domain knowledge—including the telecommunications retail industry—i3000 emphasizes service and support as much sales. The company recently demonstrated its position as a trusted Oracle CRM On Demand partner working with several Telstra Business Partners in Australia.

Telstra Business Partners are independent franchisees of Telstra, a leading telecommunications and information services company with a well-known brand across Australia. Telstra Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast, TalkEzy Group in Brisbane, Queensland and Telstra Business Center (TBC) Homebush in Sydney, New South Wales are based in different locations, but each organization faces a very competitive telecommunications market. In addition, they must abide by strict regulations while ensuring that customer data is accurate and secure.

According to Michael van Lieven, owner of TBC Homebush, he decided to implement Oracle CRM On Demand to better manage customer information and to integrate with their point-of-sale (POS) system. Specifically, he needed a better way to manage the existing customer database to pull lists of customers to see when contracts were coming up for renewal. He also wanted to capture data about customers more directly and manage the data more efficiently. “The POS system is a pure data capture and ledger system, and we wanted more functionality,” he explains.

For TBC Homebush,, i3000 was able to create an integration solution that links the Oracle CRM system with the POS system so that customer data captured in the POS is fed into the Oracle system. “We have a better idea of what sales are in the pipeline,” says van Lieven. “That’s very valuable to us.”

“Accessibility and security are important,” says Renae Jamieson, marketing manager at Telstra Burleigh Heads. “Before, different reps had different spreadsheets. There was not a single central source of truth for data.” With Oracle CRM On Demand, users can log in from any web browser or any PC and access secure data. And because it’s a hosted solution, IT management costs are reduced.

For the Telstra Business Partners, working with i3000 proved to be an attractive proposition. “i3000 made it very easy in every way, from support to knowledge of the product and response times” says Kay Bielenberg, managing director at Talk Ezy Group. “Our project only took a couple of weeks to be up and running, which was less than our expectations.”

Management at i3000 understands that when customers look for CRM solutions, they tend to compare product features. But this is only part of the story—stability and expertise should also be considered. “When we start working with potential clients, we try to move them away from feature comparisons and more towards solution comparisons,” says Shane Cunningham, Principal at i3000. “Customers need to make sure the technology can do the job, and that the partner can do the initial implementation, and remain by their side for ongoing support.”

The i3000 team prides itself on comprehensive customer service, which includes training, ongoing account management, periodic solution reviews and providing a set number of free support hours as part of customer software subscriptions. If, for example, a customer needs new reports or adjustments to existing reports within a of go-live, the need can be met by using these support hours (rather than the customer having to justify additional budget). “This works really well for customers that don’t have the size, complexity or budget to warrant a formal support agreement,” says Cunningham.

The i3000 team ensures that its CRM solutions remain aligned with clients’ business requirements through on-going support. This on-going support may include making small changes to meet new business requirements, introducing new ideas to bring improvement to the business operations, or enabling a newly available feature. i3000’s business model is to create a long term partnerships with its clients. This is vital in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) world as clients are not locked in by upfront software purchases and large implementation projects.

“We’re a relatively small company, so we decided to focus exclusively on Oracle CRM On Demand,” says Shane Cunningham, Principal at i3000. “We wanted to partner with a market-leading company, with a market-leading product, who continuously invests in its applications,”. Since making the initial decision to become an Oracle Partner in 2008, i3000 has the distinction of being one of the very few Oracle partners in Australia that has achieved Oracle Specialized status in Oracle CRM On Demand.

And the effort has paid off. “i3000 is a true business partner. They understand business and they set realistic expectations. They always deliver on-time and present great solutions,” says Jamieson.