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Complete CRM: Customer Focused
ORACLE’S APPROACH HELPS ENTERPRISES MAKE DEEP CUSTOMER CONNECTIONS.
s businesses confront new eco-
nomic challenges all over the
world, managers are paying close
attention to their customers—and
how to keep them happy. Oracle
customer relationship management
(CRM) offers a range of products,
industry expertise, and deployment
options that are transforming the
customer experience, including
an increased emphasis on social
CRM. Mark Woollen, Oracle vice
president of CRM, tells Profit how
Oracle is staying on the cutting
edge of CRM with social network-
ing, role-based intelligence, and
prebuilt system integration.
BOB ADLER
PROFIT: What are some of
Oracle’s new CRM capabilities,
and what makes them important
for our customers?
WOOLLEN: Oracle has a wealth
of very deep and broad CRM capabilities. One of the things we’re invested
in is embedded analytics, and this is
true for Oracle Siebel software as well
as for Oracle CRM On Demand. We
offer more than just a set of data warehousing reports. The software actually
contains a set of analytics that were
embedded directly from user experience. So, it’s not just senior managers;
it’s really people who are individual
contributors—sales and customer
service representatives—who have critical business intelligence [BI] embedded
directly into the application. The work
we do in BI in particular continues
to be a big investment for us, just as
we continue to invest a lot in loyalty
management and self-service and other
domains, because we think these types
of investments are very advantageous to
customers in terms of not only helping
them cut costs but also helping them
for their success?” Answering
even these basic questions
sheds insight into the potential
need for mobile CRM or critical
business processes that require
integration to CRM, such as
order-to-cash.
PROFIT: What helps keep
Oracle ahead of the curve in
terms of delivering CRM prod-
ucts and services?
WOOLLEN: One of our key
advantages is our industry-
driven expertise. We have a
proven set of technologies that
are open and standards-based,
and we have been investing in
world-class applications. Also,
through Oracle Application
Integration Architecture, we are
able to deliver true out-of-the-
box, end-to-end business pro-
cesses. Another key element is the fact
that you can have your CRM delivered
on demand, on premises, or both ways
through a hybrid approach. This is very
valuable to a lot of companies, and we
are unique in being able to offer this sort
of comprehensive approach that we call
“complete CRM.”
PROFIT: How is social networking
changing the landscape of CRM?
WOOLLEN: One of the biggest trends
for our B2B customers and even more
so for our B2C customers is the evolving nature of who has the most control
in the customer relationship. It used
to be a top-down relationship that was
controlled by the companies. Now with
these community-based entities that
exist on the Web such as LinkedIn,
Facebook, and MySpace, it’s not just
customers demanding information
from companies. In many cases, it’s the
customers who are talking amongst
Mark Woollen, vice president of CRM at Oracle, says successful
CRM projects require strategy, executive support, and user buy-in.
better retain and optimize revenue
around their customer base, which is
critical for the times we are in today.
PROFIT: What are some important first
steps customers should take as they
begin to think strategically about CRM?
WOOLLEN: The number one requirement for a successful CRM project,
whether it’s on premises or software
as a service, is for companies to get
their end users onboard early and
keep them involved in the process by
incorporating their feedback where it’s
appropriate. Number two, executive
sponsorship on all sides of the table—
including the customer, the vendor,
and the integration partner—is of fundamental importance. The third most
important step is for companies to take
the time to truly understand their specific needs. For example, an executive
might ask, “How do our salespeople
work? What other systems are critical
