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Reshuffling its North American sales organization is Oracles latest bid in an ongoing campaign to file down the teeth of its infamously carnivorous sales force. The campaign has taken on new urgency as the database giant seeks to digest its recent acquisitions of PeopleSoft and Retek without scaring off customers or partners.
To wit, the Redwood Shores, Calif., company reportedly has plugged Ted Bereswill, former director of the eastern region of Oracle Corp.s North American sales, into a position as leader of the vendors entire North American technology sales operation.
Bereswill takes over the western region from Dan Stoks, who reportedly will head up Retek Global Sales and Consulting.
Finally, Oracle has reportedly promoted John Boucher to become senior vice president of North American commercial applications.
Oracle executive vice president Keith Block reportedly disclosed internally that the shakeup will likely be announced at Oracles annual sales event this week in Las Vegas.
The personnel moves were disclosed internally within documents viewed by CRN. Oracle did not respond to requests for comment on the news reports.
The battle for Oracle is to make over the sales forces long-held reputation of being tough to work with. “Their sales people are known for being very arrogant, in general,” said Tony Baer, an analyst for onStrategies.
“Oracle partner was considered for a long time to be an oxymoron. … And even though Im sure they have good vertical people, its not known for being very [good at selling into vertical markets].”
The attempts to change predate Oracles acquisition of PeopleSoft, finalized in January, and its acquisition of retail applications vendor Retek, a company Oracle took control of in April.
For example, in July 2004, Oracle issued the companys first-ever set of guidelines to instruct its sales staff in North America on how to play nice with partners, including channels, ISVs, resellers, integrators and VARs.
The simplified set of six guiding principles instructed sales staff to, among other things, identify and work with partners in accounts and to respect a given partners “position and value-add” in those accounts.
In spite of such actions, the word on the street is that Oracles biggest challenge following the epic swallowing of PeopleSoft Inc. still has been to repair its relationship with the channel.