Oracle releases CRM Gadgets for Sales, five mini-applications that let salespeople do desktop search and access information about contacts, top accounts, top deals and sales quotas. The idea is to give Salesforce.com a run for its money by modernizing the software in organizations that use Oracle's enterprise applications.Most everywhere you turn, software makers are building widgets or gadgets, those lightweight applications popularized by Google that provide virtual services such as news, weather, time, calendar or map information.
Oracle
joined the gadget party Nov. 12 with Oracle CRM Gadgets for Sales,
desktop gadgets that mash up data from a company's CRM system with data
from the Internet to deliver current information to sales forces even
when they are disconnected from the corporate network.
Once the staffer reconnects with the network, the gadgets automatically
update user data, Mark Woollen, vice president of social CRM Apps at
Oracle, told eWEEK. These apps were built in Adobe's AIR environment
and cover search,
sales contacts, top accounts, top deals and sales quotas to provide
business information without requiring a sales staffer to be online.
Such gadgets are important for salespeople looking to gain a
competitive advantage over rivals. The idea is that sales staffers who
acquire the most current information about their clients or prospects
can better execute on sales.
See screenshots of Oracle's new CRM Gadgets here.
For Oracle, the gadgets are a way to better compete with rival Salesforce.com, which has made some social and Web 2.0 augmentations to its own platform.
Nucleus Research analyst Rebecca Wettemann noted that while successful
salespeople have always used social networks to help them sell,
Oracle's Social CRM provides technology to support it and a more
standardized way to track it. "Integration into the CRM app itself
accelerates access and makes it easy for salespeople to connect the
dots," she added.
The new Oracle tool includes the My Contacts Gadget, which gives users
a way to find leads, prospects or customers in social networks and
other Web sites and then click to e-mail or click to call them from
their Siebel CRM or Oracle CRM On Demand application. This practice
saves the salesperson from juggling multiple applications, providing
greater efficiency.
The Search Gadget is a desktop-based search tool to let workers search
their entire Siebel CRM database or specific sub-collections of data.
A Top Accounts Gadget is interesting because it provides users a
mash-up of key account data from the Siebel CRM or Oracle CRM On Demand
system together with Internet-based content. For example, a Top
Accounts Gadget user can tap into real-time stock quotes and relevant
news feeds from Google Finance for info concerning the companies with
whom they are working.
The Top Deals Gadget, as the title implies, provides sales folks with
real-time insight into sales opportunities that are scheduled to close
in the current period. Finally, the Sales Quota Gadget pipes current
information for quarter sales pipelines, target for the quarter and the
quota achieved to date for Siebel CRM users.
The sales gadgets are pre-built with integration with Oracle Contact
Center On Demand, so that users can make phone calls and capture the
call information directly into the CRM system, providing analysis for
sales managers.
The gadgets, available now as free downloads to existing Oracle CRM customers,
will work on any desktop operating system or any Web browser. The tools
also support Oracle's Siebel CRM (7.7 and above) and Oracle CRM On
Demand.
While the new gadgets are rooted in the desktop, Woollen said future
releases of the gadgets will include browser-based capabilities and
Oracle programmers are building an SDK to allow customers to build
Internet gadgets of their own.