Oracle walks the e-business walk

At Oracle`s e-business event this week Oracle Corp. announced that it is expanding on its commitment to become a flagship example of e-business innovation by extending its e-business practices to include a Web-based customer relationship tool for its sales force and customers and a new, personalized sales and marketing fulfillment automation system.

Responding to customer demand, the company also plans to move its software sales fulfillment to the Web. Earlier this year, Oracle transformed its internal business processes by implementing Oracle Applications Release 11 to improve efficiencies and streamline operations. Oracle now performs 100 percent of its financial, distribution and human resources business processes on its corporate Intranet.

"While our competitors are merely talking the talk of e-business, Oracle is actually walking the walk," said Mark Jarvis, senior vice president, Oracle Worldwide Marketing. "As a global company with the breadth of solutions to meet the e-business challenge, we are committed to walk the path with our customers and share the rewards of e-business success."

E-Business Innovations Offer Personalized Marketing, Improved Sales Efficiencies

With this announcement, Oracle will offer a complete "See, Try and Buy" model that allows the Oracle sales force to provide a personalized sales experience for each customer. This experience includes: an Internet Seminar series where prospects can view a sales seminar from a standard browser in the comfort of their own offices and interact via Internet chat with Oracle developers and executives during the seminar; new Oracle product demos and presentations on the website; a web-based collateral-on-demand system that personalizes product information for each customer or prospect; and an online store for online software ordering and fulfillment. By streamlining these processes, Oracle`s customers will have access to the most up-to-date information about the company`s products and services and Oracle`s sales people can focus on building customer relationships rather than performing administrative sales tasks.

The Oracle Store(R), based on Oracle`s iStore product, will create a single point-of-entry for sales representatives, customers and partners for software ordering and fulfillment, with full online access to inventory worldwide, online configuration capability, up-to-the minute information on sales promotions and real-time order tracking. The Oracle Store will simplify how customers do business with Oracle, offering a simpler licensing and pricing structure, and vastly improved efficiencies.

Building and Operating a Better E-Business

Over the past two years, Oracle has transformed into an e-business by streamlining operations with Oracle`s industry leading self-service Internet applications. By using these intuitive, Web-based applications, Oracle employees have the ability to manage their own transactions in a paperless environment and take advantage of the automatic workflow capabilities to get results far more quickly than with traditional administration techniques. In addition, the use of self-service applications allows Oracle`s finance and administration personnel to concentrate on value-added activities, such as lowering corporate expenses, rather than on processing and managing administrative transactions.

With Oracle`s own implementation of the latest version of its applications, Oracle Applications Release 11, Oracle has already transitioned all of its internal appraisals, expenses, human resources, procurement, training, travel and stock purchase processes to leverage the cost savings and efficiencies of the Internet computing. Next week, Oracle will roll out Oracle Field Sales to over 4,000 sales people in North America enabling sales representatives to manage all aspects of the sales cycle including compensation planning and sales forecasting.

Travel and Procurement Move to the Net

Oracle intends to move its corporate travel and planning function to the Oracle eTravel system, a self-service, web-based corporate travel management solution. More than 20,000 Oracle employees will be able to access Oracle eTravel via a standard web browser allowing a reduction in the direct and administrative costs of business travel by 15 percent or more. Oracle expects to save $50 million in travel costs over the next five years.

In another move to e-business, has implemented Oracle Strategic Procurement, its fully automated Internet-based software suite that enables the purchase of items needed to run an e-businesses at the lowest total cost or best value. By providing a single solution that supports all types of purchasing, both production and non-production -- Oracle uses the Internet to dramatically improve the way goods and services are purchased. Oracle Strategic Procurement enables the company to capture savings of up to 20 percent of annual expenditures.