Siebel 8.11, Free Gadgets and CRM 2.0 - What A Country

Oracle is a client of mine. I'm lucky enough to have clients that I can like - and I'm in a position - even in the downturn - to continue that policy. I don't have to take a client if I don't want to. I'm going to repeat something that I've repeated before - this is NOT a company that I thought that I'd be liking or even without that, seeing as a leader in the CRM space because they understood what contemporary customers are looking for. But in surprise irony of ironies - I not only admire but truly like the CRM organization within Oracle - though I'm not willing to make that a company wide statement - at least not yet - and they are one of the three companies I see heading up the CRM space - though we'll be talking more on that on my ZDNET blog - which is where the forecasts for this year will be covered in detail. Abbreviated versions here in a few days. But 2007's Oracle OpenWorld was a surprise in every way and was a turning point for both the company, and, admittedly, me. The CRM group, under Anthony Lye, has done some amazing "stuff" and continues to.

Eventually, I won't keep repeating that pre-entry caveat/explanation as I think I do every damned time I mention Oracle, but I'm still getting comfortable with liking them and seeing them as leaders in CRM, so you'll have to suffer along with me, if you don't mind.

All that said, they now have made another step along the path of CRM enlightenment and goodness with the release of Siebel 8.11 and Oracle CRM Gadgets, a rather good, even entertaining and, of course, best of all, free offering from Oracle to up the ante for CRM 2.0.

Siebel 8.1.1............1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.

Even though, Oracle CRM Gadgets is going to get the more of the press buzz than Siebel 8.1.1 - its the weirdly numbered release Siebel 8.1.1 that, combined with the Gadgets, is the real significant upgrade. Siebel 8.11, which, since it was, according to Oracle, "a major upgrade", should probably have been Siebel 8.5, while not a game changer by a long shot is something deserves some serious notice for what it purports to be. There are two facets that are of major importance with this release - the inclusion of a significant amount of loyalty management capabilities - something that has long been missing from most CRM applications - and, as customers becoming increasingly self-reliant - a significant inclusion of web self service functionality.

If you buy into the idea of "social customers" then it becomes increasingly obvious that whatever you as a business need to do to engage those customers so that they can become your advocates becomes of paramount importance. Loyalty programs and the ability to define loyalty "levels" and to make it valuable to a customer to be an advocate becomes something that, especially during an economic downturn becomes of huge significance to companies that need to retain those customers when their inclination in general is to bolt or minimally to not buy or retain any consumer level relationships since conspicuous consumption is now declasse. But because CRM has been such a transactional haven, loyalty management hasn't been part of very many CRM applications in the past. This is an important step for what has been not just "a" traditional CRM application but the paradigm traditional CRM application - Siebel. Rather than go into some big technological explanation of what and how they are integrating loyalty capabilities suffice to say that this is a strategically important capability. Siebel has already had some traction with it in the most loyalty-challenged industries that exist - which would be airlines (American Airlines among others) and telcos - primarily in Europe and the Middle East (e.g. Turkish Telecon, Saudi Mobile).

For the most part, the Loyalty piece is a Loyalty program management facility - here's Oracle's direct description:

"Oracle's Siebel Loyalty Management 8.1.1 is a comprehensive, customer-centric, multi-channel and multi-partner loyalty solution that supports the entire loyalty program lifecycle. Siebel Loyalty Management 8.1.1 includes deep industry and loyalty best practices for member enrollment and management, tier management, accrual and redemption, personalized loyalty promotions and member communications, multi-channel customer care, cross-industry partner management and analytics. It is delivered on an open, standards-based and scalable platform and that provides flexibility and agility far beyond traditional systems."

While much of that is marketing blecch, you get the idea that it is loyalty program management - which, despite the marketspeak, is a very valuable capability. However, the most valuable part of this and the part that actually enhances the potential advocacy of the individual customer is buried further along in the datasheet:

"At the heart of Siebel Loyalty Management 8.1.1 is a 360-degree view of each customer's profile, attitudinal insights, and behavioral information. It provides business users access to extensive information on each member including tier status and value, transaction history, loyalty assets, eligible and enrolled promotions, service requests, sales orders and activities, preferences and response history."

This is the key because it is the information repository that enables companies to identify highly specific individual emotional/behavioral information and then make reasoned judgments (hopefully, though technology certainly never guarantees that) on how to treat your demanding social customer. Not something that many CRM programs concern themselves with though there are a number (of course) of Loyalty Management standalones out there.

Just to break up the Times Roman monotony, here are a couple of the Siebel 8.1.1. Loyalty Management screenshots:

First one of the Loyalty Management Portal - customized and OEMed to your obvious heart's content.

Now for backstage:

Note the level of program administration that can be handled - very deep on that side of the fence. What makes it interesting really is its PRM-like functionality. Why? Because at this point, in order to create advocates, you need an ecosystem that can provide for the broader needs of the targeted customers. So, for example, not only do you provide an airfare and a airplane to ride in, but you provide travel information, hotels, car rentals and things to do - all in a single, simple convenient place - and with discounts that are based on the committments that the customer made to you. In other words, you reward the loyalty so that the customer becomes an advocate - because their experience was exceptional and the convenience was part of the experience. This functionality allows for the management of that.

Siebel 8.1.1. also provides web self service which is also a step forward, though because there is much of that out there already, less visible and not quite as dramatic. However their version has two advantages - or at least, interesting features - one is that uses their Fusion middleware which means the customer self service functions can be accessed not only through Siebel but also through even the sadly neglected PeopleSoft CRM applications - which allows for an integrated customer experience even if Siebel is nowhere else to be found. It is a standards based capability - nothing more proprietary about it. If you want a really well done article on the technology of Siebel 8.1.1. and the Oracle CRM Gadgets, see Oliver Marks' highly recommended ZDNET blog entry on this.

Oracle CRM Gadgets or Mashups or Widgets or Mobile Dashboard....

Let's start with the gallery of four Oracle CRM desktop doodads and then talk a bit about them because, while I think the Siebel release is actually more important, these are unmistakably cool, no matter how you slice it.

Here's what we know about these four:

1. They are, in order, Contacts, Sales Quota, Top Accounts, and Top Deals
2. They are customizable by the user - who can customize the colors, length, currencies a.k.a. look and feel; they can customize the visible fields and the data that is being shown a.k.a. the rest of it.
3. They are useful because they don't require you to go into the CRM application itself to pull out the data - the data is pulled out for you dynamically and that is a huge time saver and a plus
4. They are free to users of Siebel 7.7 and up - and others too.
5. They are built on Adobe Air as Google Gadgets and soon will also be accessible as Adobe Air gadgets, which clearly makes sense in a "duh" kind of way
6. They are effectively a mobile dashboard that is provided in a jigsaw sort of way

But here is the fifth one:

This is the one called Oracle CRM Search (though I think in the briefing, I heard "Perpetual Search" which also could be my fevered imagination) that I think has the most possibilities - though down the road - and is easily the most intriguing and potentially the most valuable.

"But," you say, "Paul, are you a moron? What value could this simple search box have? I understand that it gets CRM metadata and pulls out account info etc. but so f-ing what? What's so great about that?"

Funny you should ask.

One shouldn't forget that Oracle has several Sales 2.0 related products out there - notably Sales Prospector, Sales Campaign, and my favorite, Sales Library. Imagine this scenario with this little gadget/widget/mashup called Search.

A salesperson is going on a sales call to do a presentation to a prospect to drive a deal identified by Sales Prospector forward. The salesperson (note the gender neutrality here) wants to find out what his colleagues think is the best presentation, given the characteristics of this potential deal, that the salesperson can pull out of the Sales Library to bring with them to do the presentation to the prospect. Rather than having to go to Sales Library and then do a search and see the rankings etc. to make that determination, they simply type into this box the following: "best sales presentation, ranked 4 stars or better, for Company XYZ opportunity" and it brings up the link to the presentation in the results so that you can go straight to the Sales Library and download it.

YES! Easy way to get what you need quickly and simply - with little necessary "load the app and pray it all works right" stuff to do. Can the Search Gadget do this yet? Not according to Oracle. Will it be able to do that - and even pull in social profile data as part of the search. Should be able to according to Oracle. If it gets to where it can, this is one very very cool Gadget.

So there you have it. I think that despite the sexy-cool of the Gadgets (sad that this is what passes for sexy in CRM, though....Sigh), Siebel 8.1.1, despite weird numbering, is Oracle showing that it still realizes the Social CRM means that social customers are what need to be reckoned with - and that's even cooler. Again, not earthshaking but distinctly cool.

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Comments

[Tom]

Great post Paul. I love how Oracle responds to almost any situation easily. I used used a lot of tools in the past past but your platform is by far the best.

[Vincent]

This company stock (ROKE) is set to take off. Worldwide client base in the mobile communications space. See the details at
www.icoft.com/roke.html

[Sundarlal]

Onyx 10 puts this to shame

[Craig Klein]

Thanks Paul!

Great to get a look "behind the curtain" at Oracle's CRM directions!

[Dipock Das]

Paul,

thanks for the write up. I just wanted to clear up the comment regarding item 5 (Adobe AIR and Google Gadgets). This release is Adobe AIR only - but they have been tested on Mac, Windows and Linux - so no one gets left behind. The next release will be Google desktop gadgets - followed by the browser based equivalent delivered as iGoogle gadgets and Flash based gadgets.

[Marshall Lager]

Great assessment of Oracle's announcements. It's much more opinionated than I could be in a news article, but I agree that the update and the gadgets are seriously welcome. I had asked Anthony Lye whether customers were leery of the Siebel name years after the acquisition, but he told me they've got "high double-digit" growth in the installed version and even more in the on-demand. Siebel seems indestructible.

[Michael Fauscette]

Excellent post Paul! I really like what Oracle's doing around customer engagement, loyalty and productivity for the moble sales professional. In general at OpenWorld this year I thought Oracle came out very strongly as a leader in Enterprise 2.0 tools with everything from a new collaboration platform (Oracle Beehive) to very compelling iPhone and mobile apps. And yes, they're my client too.