Oracle drives Web 2.0 CRM

By Alex Kayle, Senior portals journalist

Johannesburg, 17 Mar 2009

Low bandwidth remains an inhibitor to business growth, according to Steve Fearon, VP for customer relationship management (CRM) on-demand and CRM sales development at Oracle.

Fearon addressed international and local delegates, regarding Oracle's CRM strategy, at the Oracle Applications Conference, at Summer Place, in Hyde Park. The event provided insight into Oracle's business applications. Earlier this year, the company unveiled its CRM On-Demand Release 16.

Companies from African countries have shown growing interest in Oracle's CRM applications to improve their business efficiencies, Fearon said. “The opportunities for growing our CRM market in Africa are there. The South African market is key for our channel strategy and we expect a massive growth in the CRM On-Demand software market.”

Poor bandwidth

However, lack of cost-effective high-speed bandwidth is an inhibitor for Oracle's growth in the CRM space in the country, Fearon said.

Graham Mansfield, CRM director for sales in the Middle East and Africa, said: “What we realise is that the applications business in SA has potential. Currently, South African companies are dependent on the more traditional CRM applications. SA is inhibited because of the current limiting bandwidth capacity and high telecommunications costs. However, I expect this to change when we get new broadband from Seacom in June. The next stage is for high-speed bandwidth to be made available to companies at commercially viable rates.”

According to Mansfield, these are the times when companies need to retain their customers more than ever, because of the economic crisis. Having an efficient CRM system and business intelligence system to back up a company will be the difference for those companies that survive, he added.

Keep talking

Where companies fail is where they don't maintain dialogue with their customers and don't have the right systems in place to manage their partner strategy, Fearon said. The future for CRM will be a mash-up of Web 2.0 technologies and business applications, he predicted.

Oracle will see a lot of growth within the next 12 months in its Sales Prospector application, he said. This uses Web 2.0 technology that enables sales people to connect with one another via a Web interface.

Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx, said the technology takes advantage of the strengths that Web 2.0 brings to communications: “One of the biggest benefits seen with this technology is collaboration. It is very significant to CRM because it's based on a network environment and content sharing. People are using it at an enterprise level to enhance teamwork and collaboration.”

Goldstuck agreed with Fearon that the country's bandwidth requirements remain a challenge for companies choosing CRM applications: “Bandwidth holds back any kind of collaboration efforts that require Internet connectivity. At the moment, a company requires a high transfer of data, then it becomes very bandwidth hungry. Overall, we've been held back by the kind of applications we can use.”