CRM Solution from Oracle and Cisco WebEx

CRM Solution from Oracle and Cisco WebEx


The Cisco WebEx group has already began its offering with the Oracle Siebel customer relationship management (CRM) on demand server. This new development is a breath of fresh air for Oracle which has in the few days seen and experienced so much headache with its plan in acquiring BEA systems.


It was in October 23, 2007 that on-demand collaboration applications and services leader WebEx which is now part of Cisco, and Oracle, the world's largest enterprise software company, announced their collaborative effort with the offering of the Oracle's Siebel CRM and its integration of the WebEx Connect application ecosystem.



The new offering, which is part of the Connect application ecosystem, will feature sales management tools that can allow users to engage at key points in the sales proceeds. The sales dashboard can consolidate critical information while streamlining activities for a 360 degree view of opportunities. It also has an integrated feature to help improve sales productivity by automatically tracking WebEx meetings as well as prospecting activity. It can help forecast, report and visualize with tools that can also help in sales data analysis. Its real time processing management tools can help optimize sales methodologies with testing and analytical feedback.



It has been estimated that the CRM sector worldwide expects to exceed $7.4 billion in 2007, climbing to $11.4 billion in 2011 in growth and for on-demand CRM solutions, the growth is projected to be twice as much.



According to Erica Ruliffson, group vice president, Siebel CRM On Demand North America sales, "Together, Oracle and Cisco WebEx have the integrated solution that companies need to manage their customer relationships and make it easy to do business cost effectively online.”



WebEx has the power in enabling the new generation of collaborative business applications and services to connect to each to produce better productivity and system efficiency. The WebEx connect client can allow the users to build applications with mashups that are customizable when used for particular business processes that range from on demand, on premise application to on-the-desktop applications.



As an example, a WebEx Connect user may be able to make a quick sales mash up with the WebEx Sales Center, Siebel CRM On Demand, a social networking site, and an e-mail and calendaring client. These can all be done with minimal or no hand coding at all thus productivity will be greatly achieved at lesser time. And since these mash ups have already rich functionalities on their own, when they are integrated by WebEx Connect's unified collaboration and communications capabilities to provide contextual collaboration within a business process, it means a completely new and rich business application is easily at hand.



"Effective collaboration accelerates any business cycle, and when combined with CRM, brings salespeople closer to their customers. This alliance brings together three fast-moving trends: enterprise 2.0 mashups, the explosive CRM area and on-demand application platforms." said Subrah Iyar, vice president and general manager, Cisco WebEx.


WebEx will host a free webinar on accelerating sales cycles with collaborative CRM on Novemeber 6. Visit http://www.webex.com/web-seminars/view_event/667110863 to register.