Oracle CRM Alternative Products

Oracle CRM on Demand Sweet Spot
Short list CRM on Demand when:

• Searching for a low total cost of ownership (TCO) CRM suite.
• If you feel you may change software delivery methods from SaaS to on-premises or vice versa.
• Your IT department is an Oracle shop. Note that while it seldom makes sense to choose a business application simply based on IT's platform and stack adoption, there may be significant opportunities from Oracle's Fusion roadmap for CRM on Demand customers. These need to be explored.
• You're looking for a tier 2 CRM system; whether your tier 1 is E-Business Suite or another product.
• Your business is in the automotive, high technology, insurance, life sciences, or wealth management industry. Oracle's industry software support is not limited to simple re-configuration and brochureware common among CRM players claiming vertical solutions, but instead makes extensions to the data model, includes unique industry records and columns, and defines industry specific business processes.
• You're seeking an on-demand CRM suite with a strong contact center component. The service module from most SaaS CRM vendors is a better fit for help desks or small call centers. Only Oracle's CRM Contact on Demand, RightNow Technologies and Salesforce.com, Cloud Suite 3 are capable of stepping up to the needs of more sophisticated contact centers.

Alternative Solutions
Buyers may be best advised to consider alternative CRM products when:

• Seeking best of breed CRM solutions.
• Seeking CRM and tightly integrated social CRM capabilities.
• Seeking vertically focused solutions outside of Oracle's named industry editions.

Oracle Customers
Existing Oracle customers are advised to:

• Consider CRM On Demand if you're an E-Business Suite customer looking for a tier 2 CRM system for regional, line of business or satellite office locations.
• Consider CRM On Demand if you're looking at Fusion CRM down the road, but need an interim solution now that offers a straight-forward transition process later. Get up to speed on Fusion middleware and investigate Oracle's proposed Application Integration Architecture (AIA) as the tool to make the conversion.
• Liaise with your Oracle representatives to get detailed product roadmaps and pricing announcements so you may understand how CRM On Demand and Fusion may affect or deliver new capabilities to your existing infrastructure.

Concluding Remarks
The current Oracle CRM on Demand Release 19 has delivered CRM Desktop, connected mobile sales, enhanced security and more depth in vertical market editions such as life sciences, insurance and financial services. The next release in the product roadmap shows a Release 19 Innovation Pack to include a more configurable mobile, a disconnected mobile, chat (COD) and OPA (Oracle Policy Automation) integration—thereby opening up a suite of software products for more sophisticated modeling and business rules. Looking further ahead, Release 20 is scheduled to bring more incremental advancements including enhanced usability, analytics, mobility, hosted code and further vertical market depth.

Despite being an Oracle branded product, CRM on Demand flies below the radar for far too many SaaS CRM buyers. Perhaps Oracle's messaging has gotten lost in the noise of its own company's announcements or within the deluge of provocative messaging from competitors such as Salesforce.com or NetSuite, or even the more focused messaging delivered by SAP with its Business ByDesign product. Whatever the case, the messaging needs clarity and amplification. While not needing to resort to guerilla marketing tactics already overused in the cloud market, the company does need to improve messaging and increase marketing promotion if it is too have any chance to gain ground on primary competitor Salesforce.com.