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What You Need to Know About Oracle FusionCRMPublished: 16 May 2012

Analyst(s): Robert P. Desisto

Oracle has released Oracle Fusion CRM for sales organizations' sales forceautomation initiatives. It offers enhanced capabilities; however, morecustomer proof points are needed.

Impacts■ Oracle Fusion CRM lacks a vertical focus and integrated customer service/order capture; this

will require sales application managers to continue to look at Oracle Siebel and Oracle CRM OnDemand for new deployments.

■ Oracle Fusion CRM pricing and packaging will affect Oracle Siebel and Oracle CRM OnDemand customers that want to migrate to Oracle Fusion CRM.

■ The release of Oracle Fusion CRM with embedded analytics expands the territory managementcapabilities of sales operations managers.

■ Oracle CRM Desktop enables salespeople to interact with Oracle Fusion CRM directly from theMicrosoft Outlook Client.

■ Oracle Fusion CRM's Application Extensibility Framework will improve configuration andcustomization.

Recommendations■ All new Oracle CRM Sales prospects should evaluate Oracle Fusion Sales. This is the strategic

direction for Oracle's CRM sales offerings.

■ Life sciences and insurance brokerage customers should evaluate Oracle CRM On Demand.

■ On-premises customers with consumer packaged goods, retail/travel and transportation, and/orpublic sector requirements should consider Oracle Siebel.

■ Customers that want integrated sales and services on the same architectural platform shouldconsider Oracle CRM On Demand for software as a service (SaaS) or Oracle Siebel for on-premises.

AnalysisWith few exceptions, Oracle has instructed its sales force to lead sales force automation (SFA)prospects to Oracle Fusion CRM, which is available for SaaS and on-premises. There are goodreasons for this decision, as this research will describe. Clients now entering into discussions withOracle regarding SFA should insist that their Oracle sales teams include in their proposals theOracle Fusion CRM solution.

In this document we identify five key areas of impact of Fusion CRM, presented in the order of theirimportance to clients.

Figure 1. Impacts and Top Recommendations for the New Capabilities in Oracle Fusion CRM

Impacts Top Recommendations

Oracle Fusion CRM pricing and packaging will affect Oracle Siebel and Oracle CRM On Demand customers that want to migrate to Oracle CRM Fusion

• Clients need to get contractual commitments on like-for-like definition of Oracle Siebel/Oracle CRM On Demand versus Oracle Fusion CRM functionality

• Clients should take an aggressive stance in price contract negotiations, because Oracle is looking for strong reference customers

Oracle Fusion CRM lacks a vertical focus and integrated customer service/order capture; this will require sales application managers to continue to look at Oracle Siebel and Oracle CRM On Demand for new deployments

• All new Oracle sales and marketing prospects should evaluate Oracle Fusion Sales

• Life sciences prospects should evaluate Oracle CRM On Demand

• Prospects that require on-premises solutions should evaluate Oracle Siebel

• Prospects that want integrated SaaS sales and service should evaluate Oracle CRM On Demand

The release of Oracle Fusion CRM with embedded analytics expands the territory management capabilities of sales operations managers

• Oracle Fusion CRM Territory Management is worth an initial evaluation

• Prior to a contractual commitment to Oracle, conduct a trial to evaluate the Territory Management module's ability to yield improvements, compared with your sales organization's current territory definition

Oracle CRM Desktop enables salespeople to interact with Oracle Fusion CRM directly from the Microsoft Outlook client

• Oracle Siebel, Oracle CRM On Demand, and Oracle Fusion CRM customers should consider Oracle CRM Desktop in their evaluations to integrate Microsoft Outlook

Oracle Fusion CRM's Application Extensibility Framework will improve configuration and customization

• Gartner recommends administrators with programming experience for any moderate to complex development

Source: Gartner (May 2012)

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Oracle Fusion CRM lacks a vertical focus and integrated customer service/ordercapture; this will require sales application managers to continue to look at OracleSiebel and Oracle CRM On Demand for new deployments

Oracle's official corporate position is that any new Oracle sales and marketing prospect who wantsSFA, either SaaS or on-premises, should evaluate Oracle Fusion CRM. In only a few circumstancesare Oracle account executives instructed not to lead with CRM Fusion:

■ When expanding an Oracle Siebel or Oracle CRM On Demand deployment

■ When the prospect requires vertical industry functionality for life sciences, insurance brokerageor consumer package goods (CPG)

■ When the prospect needs integrated sales and service functionality for SaaS or on-premisesdelivery

Recommendations:

■ All new Oracle CRM Sales prospects should evaluate Oracle Fusion Sales. This is the strategicdirection for Oracle's CRM sales offerings.

■ Life sciences and insurance brokerage customers should evaluate Oracle CRM On Demand.

■ CPG, retail/travel and transportation, and public-sector customers should evaluate OracleSiebel.

■ Customers that want integrated sales and services on the same architectural platform shouldconsider Oracle CRM On Demand for SaaS or Oracle Siebel for on-premises.

Oracle Fusion CRM pricing and packaging will affect Oracle Siebel and Oracle CRMOn Demand customers that want to migrate to Oracle CRM Fusion

Oracle Fusion CRM packaging has changed, compared with Oracle CRM On Demand. Table 1shows the packaging for Oracle CRM On Demand.

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Table 1. Oracle CRM On Demand Packaging

Package Key Capabilities Price Storage Limits

Standard Territory management, lead management, forecast,activity steams, CRM Desktop (Outlook Integration),Fusion Smartphone, one administration person forextensibility

$95 per user,per month

70,000 records and200MB per user

Enterprise Standard package plus quota management, salescampaigns, sales catalog, one administrator forextensibility for every 20 subscribed users

$135 per user,per month

140,000 recordsand 400MB peruser

Premium Enterprise package plus sales prediction engine(analytics to provide guidance on sales opportunitypotential), opportunity landscape (heat mapinterface to help salespeople prioritizeopportunities), incentive compensation andenterprise contracts

$195 per userper month

200,000 recordsand 600MB peruser

Source: Gartner (April 2012)

To leverage business intelligence (BI) capabilities, Oracle requires customers to buy Oracle FusionTransaction BI for CRM for $5.00 per user, per month.

There are also differences in the service-level agreement (SLA) and disaster recovery commitmentsOracle will commit to, compared with Oracle CRM On Demand. Because Oracle is built on Oracle'spublic cloud, any SLA that Oracle offers through Oracle Fusion CRM will be the same. Oracle CRMOn Demand offered SLAs as high as 99.7; Oracle Fusion CRM will offer 99.8. Oracle CRM OnDemand provided disaster recovery commitments, but it doesn't offer recovery time objectives(RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) to customers with penalties for Oracle Fusion CRM.Oracle states they will offer disaster recovery objectives, but no timeline has been communicated.

Oracle is providing incentives for Oracle Siebel and Oracle CRM On Demand customers to move toOracle Fusion CRM at no additional cost. For current Oracle Siebel or Oracle CRM On Demandcustomers, Oracle will provide access to the same functionality with Oracle Fusion CRM (on-premises for Oracle Siebel, and SaaS for CRM On Demand) at no extra cost. If you're not usingincentive compensation today, for example, Oracle will not provide free use of the Premium edition.The caveat is that a customer must be current on maintenance and/or in a current contract withOracle CRM On Demand. Oracle further states it will honor the price points of current Oracle CRMOn Demand contracts for Oracle Fusion CRM. If the Oracle Siebel or Oracle CRM on Demanddeployment is highly customized for reimplementation, customers will need to provision extraresources, time and investment.

Recommendations:

■ Oracle Siebel customers need to get contractual commitments on the like-for-like definition ofOracle Siebel versus Oracle Fusion CRM functionality. Oracle CRM On Demand customers

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need to get contractual commitments that they can have access to the same functionality inOracle Fusion CRM SaaS, under the same subscription licensing model as Oracle CRM OnDemand.

■ Clients should take an aggressive stance in their price contract negotiations, because Oracle islooking for strong reference customers.

The release of Oracle Fusion CRM with embedded analytics expands the territorymanagement capabilities of sales operations managers

Most SFA systems, including Oracle Siebel and Oracle CRM On Demand, require sales operationmanagers to explicitly define territories in the form of assignment rules. The problem with thisapproach is that it provides relatively little time to perform what-if scenarios for planning, and it'sdifficult to adapt to changes once the territory is set. Oracle leverages new functionality andanalytics to improve the flexibility of modeling territories. A typical scenario would be the territoryplanning system using an Oracle Essbase Cube to analyze whether there is an appropriate mix ofsalespeople assigned to best capitalize on the potential sales opportunities. Because theinformation is based on a cube, it can take into account multiple dimensions, such as geographyand industry. The theory of using analytics for territory planning has merit; at this point, there are noexternal customer references for Gartner to speak with to validate this new approach.

Oracle will also sell the Oracle Fusion CRM Territory Management module separately, so that it canbe used with Oracle Siebel or Oracle CRM On Demand. However, it is not an embedded solution.Oracle Fusion CRM Territory Management would output the territory definition, then Oracle Siebelor Oracle CRM On Demand would have to read it in.

Recommendations:

■ Oracle Fusion CRM Territory Management is worth an initial evaluation, because of the valuethis new analytics approach could yield.

■ Prior to any contractual commitment to Oracle, conduct a trial to evaluate the territorymanagement system's ability to yield improvements over your sales organization's currentterritory definition.

Oracle CRM Desktop enables salespeople to interact with Oracle Fusion CRMdirectly from the Microsoft Outlook client

Salespeople should integrate Outlook-related data, such as tasks, activities and events, with theSFA system they are using. Most vendors allow a salesperson to tag Outlook data for later use in anSFA system. For most sales organizations, this is sufficient; however, some salespeople becomeannoyed with moving from one system to another because they want to see the opportunity contextof an email that was sent by a contact immediately, without moving to another system. The OracleCRM Desktop is an Oracle Fusion Applications module that enables current Oracle Siebel, OracleCRM On Demand and new Oracle Fusion CRM customers to integrate and access SFA functionalitydirectly from an Outlook client.

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Synchronization of the CRM data occurs on the client. Oracle leverages the Microsoft Outlook datasources (.pst and .ost files) to store information. The user schedules synchronization from thetargeted CRM environment. Filter criteria allow a user to specify what data gets incrementallysynched. Recurring meetings are synched, but a salesperson can't see acceptances.

Recommendations:

■ Siebel, Oracle CRM On Demand, and Oracle Fusion CRM customers should consider OracleCRM Desktop in their evaluations to integrate Microsoft Outlook.

■ As is the case with most of the new branded Oracle Fusion CRM modules there is limitedcustomer validation, so sales organizations should put more emphasis on pilots to provecapabilities before committing.

■ Sales organizations should not assume CRM Desktop is a replacement for the core CRM userinterface.

Oracle Fusion CRM's Application Extensibility Framework will improve configurationand customization

A major focus of the Oracle Fusion CRM release was to improve the extensibility environment toconfigure and customize the Oracle Fusion CRM application. Oracle's Application ExtensibilityFramework (AEF) allows administrators to edit/add objects, fields and where buttons, links, etc.show up on pages in mobile devices (e.g., iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry) and computer screens.Administrators, business users and end users can configure screens to optimize experience foreach targeted device. When an administrator creates a new custom object, it will create certainitems by default such as import fields, export fields and a Web service. Each standard and customobject allows an administrator to create fields. The AEF is an improvement of current Oracle Siebeland Oracle CRM On Demand offerings.

Administrators can also write server scripts for validation rules, triggers and object functions. Thescripting language is the open-source-based Groovy. Oracle provides an expression builder forGroovy scripts, but most users are likely to simply type in an editor. For those functions not handledin Groovy, Oracle provides a global function that enables an administrator to call a Java class.

The improved AEF will not translate any special scripts previously created in Oracle Siebel or OracleCRM On Demand. This means users that heavily customized will face a significantreimplementation.

Recommendations:

■ Although Groovy comes across as an easy-to-use expression language, Gartner recommendsadministrators with programming experience for any moderate to complex development.

■ If their current Oracle Siebel and Oracle CRM On Demand deployments have significantcustomization customers should budget for a reimplementation.

Note: There are good reasons for Oracle to shift focus toward Oracle Fusion CRM, as this researchhas described. However, just as with any new-product introduction, especially from a large vendor,

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the sales force does not always embrace the shift as quickly as the strategy does. For example, wehave seen evidence, based on inquiries from end-user clients, that, in discussions, not all salesteams have led with Oracle Fusion CRM. Now that the training has taken place, we expect theseinquiries to tail off, as sales teams become more comfortable with Oracle Fusion CRM. Withexceptions as listed above, clients starting discussions with Oracle now should insist that theirOracle sales teams include Oracle Fusion CRM in any proposal for new CRM business.

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