Oracle CRM Reviews

Integration with Oracle E-Business ERP: Every installation of CRM uses some form of ERP or back office applications. The benefits of integration are often overlooked when making a CRM purchase decision. Integration of CRM with the back office applications, allows for more meaningful and effective usage of the tool. The wing-to-wing integration of applications is one of the most strong features of Oracle CRM.

As an implementer, I have worked to implement this application for organizations that were new to CRM as well as organizations that have used some other CRM tool before. The Oracle CRM application provides for an effective interaction with the customers, allows capturing vital information of the customers and provides a comprehensive view of the customer to the sales and marketing members.The wing-to-wing integration of the customer data provides an integrated view of the customer to sales and marketing.

The application needs improvement in its usability aspects. Non-integrated applications such as Salesforce have been able to be more nimble; they provide more flexibility to adapt and interface with state-of-the-art social applications, mobile technology, and communication tools. Oracle CRM needs to make advancements in this area.

The application also needs to provide a more flexible and configurable user frontend. Sales users need a more user-friendly and easily configurable user interface.

Oracle seems to encourage users to move to other platforms such as the Oracle Cloud applications to compete with Salesforce or other leading CRM products. While that may be a strategic direction to expand into markets where Salesforce is strong, Oracle should improve its hosted applications such as Oracle CRM with more flexible, effective and state-of-the-art enhancements, rather than abandoning them and leading its clientele using the hosted applications to Cloud applications.

I have used this solution for more than 13 years.

Version 12.1.3 seems to be stable now, but is reaching the end of its support cycle. Oracle 12.2 is next. Oracle CRM, in general, is becoming more stable, but each version takes some time to stabilize.

I did not experience any scalability issues, but having said that, the infrastructure aspect needs to keep lock-step with the scale of operations.

The level of technical support is fair to good.

I have used mainly Oracle CRM for a long time.

The setup varies with a particular implementation/customer. Oracle CRM provides core application that is fairly straightforward to configure and use. However, the standard out-of-the-box features do not always fit every client installation. Adapting the application to suit each customer's environment takes time and effort, but this is not unlike adopting any other application.

• Plan ahead, i.e., at least for the next five years.

• Make sure you have your internal processes worked out to conform to the industry standard practices. While each organization may be unique in certain ways, adopting standard off-the-shelf applications means conforming to standard practices. Rather than work towards bending and twisting such applications to the individual organization's requirements, make sure such special steps are really warranted. Are your practices that special so that the standard industry practices do not apply? Or do your internal practices themselves need some review? Changing, or ‘customizing’ as it is called, is expensive in the short run as well as in the long run. Do not ignore ongoing maintenance costs with such efforts. Added to this, is the need to keep up with the dynamic and fast changing technology.

• Take time to evaluate your shortlisted selections.

• Do not be influenced by the glitz and show of any product. At the end of the day, customers need to think of how effective the product is in delivering results, i.e., whether it is improving the sales effectiveness or service efficiencies. Product usability is likely to create a good first impression, but you will have to discount the surface level appeal to real day-to-day efficiencies.

• Do not discount/ignore integration challenges. Disconnected applications will reduce efficiencies and consume valuable IT resource time; it is often not given sufficient importance during the selection process. By all means, choose the best of breed approach, but make sure to allow for sufficient resource time and skills so as to achieve necessary integration for all areas to work together.

As an implementer, my platform is the Oracle CRM. I have some familiarity with other applications, but my in-depth expertise is with Oracle CRM.

• Identify one or more key ‘super users’ for leading the implementation or managing the product. These would be your go-to people for expert help.

• If you need to bring in outside help for the implementation, then do so. This will help in getting you the best help at the time you need it most.

• Prepare and train your organization for the change.

During the selection process for a CRM product, something that I have witnessed first hand, sufficient attention must be given to how the CRM application integrates with the back end applications. While it is important to consider the capabilities of the CRM applications in its own specialized areas, at some stage in the process the transactional information will have to be passed on to back end or other applications to complete the processing cycle - for Sales it would be Orders, for Service it would be service requests and tasks. At the heart of it all is integration with customer master data. A key aspect here is whether organizations are factoring in the cost of this integration with the other applications in the flow.

I will illustrate my point with the following case scenarios - from ideal to not-so-ideal

Case 1: In this case the selection process evaluates the CRM application for features and capabilities to their specific needs. The selection process includes considerations for integrating the CRM application data with the other applications to complete the end-to-end process flow and for master data, and including the folks in IT in the discussions to identify the integration that will be necessary for a sustainable on-going operation, and factors this cost and time into the overall cost of the CRM application. The estimation is realistic and considers all aspects of the applications involved in the flow. The cost aspects include one-time costs as well as ongoing costs for sustained operations. This would be the ideal scenario.

Case 2: In this case the selection process evaluates the CRM application for features and capabilities to their specific needs, but only with the relevant end users, for eg. with predominant opinion of Sales or Marketing users only. This process does not list out the potential integration with other applications, does not include IT or other team members to evaluate the requirements or effort and leaves these aspects as a post-implementation effort. With such a process only the immediate needs of the CRM application are considered. As it becomes evident later, the need for adding on integration with other applications are brought up and dealt with as and when the need arises, many a time overwhelming the resources of IT or other resources and discovering blind alleys of integration, with incompatible interfaces, ad-hoc methods to back file such requirements, leading to a very messy after-thought for building consistent and efficient business processes. I have witnessed these myself in more than one implementation. Not only have I seen such after-thought Integration of transactional data, I have even worked on efforts to integrate master data, such as customer data, exposing weaknesses of both applications. There was one case where the CRM application was set operational with one-time setup of customer master data from the back-end application with no thought given to ongoing processes for continuous synchronization of data between the two systems - the CRM application and the back end Order fulfillment application with customer master data.

Case 3: This case is just a more extreme variation of Case 2. In this case the selection process evaluates the CRM application on its own, as in Case 2. There is no effort to list out the potential integration or even the need for integration. The administration staff are left to manage the integration with manual maintenance of data on the related applications and doing manual synchronization. This is a very poor use of technology.

Case 4: This case is becoming more and more an attraction to the people in Sales and Marketing areas. In this case the selection process evaluates the CRM application for features and capabilities with an eye on all the third party integration solutions to the core CRM product - the 'app' attraction. The 'app' era has led to third party solutions, the ultimate version of best-of-breed - the core CRM solution for customer and contact data, an app for emailing solutions, an app for data mining, an app for social app integration and so on. The integration aspects of such solutions are considered on an ad-hoc basis with no forethought to process consistencies. With data and processes in such diverse environments it is anyone's guess whose job it is to manage the different flows of data, if that is even possible by the company's IT. One recent case I came across where the company engaged with a third party to manage its diverse applications on the cloud! In conclusion, fully integrated platforms with CRM applications are at the one end of the spectrum of integrated solutions while the CRM cloud applications with third party integrating applications are at the other end. Each organization needs to evaluate which point in the spectrum makes most sense for it, not just in the short run, but in the long run also, before jumping in to settle down on the solution. Making a choice that is short sighted hides the long term cost of use and short changes business objectives while costing the organization in never ending efforts to shuttle data between systems to achieve key business visibility to what is really happening

I use it for deal registrations, pipeline reviews, approvals on financials and offers, and some sort of course reports to management regarding the pipeline review as well.

I don't use it for marketing activities, but for sales, it's good. It has good visibility and monitoring that makes it easier to view and review my pipeline.

I like the features and the 360-degree view of customer data.

I find the reporting features impactful. 

Integration is great because we have a lot of systems integrated. We have integration with SAP and other systems.

We use the on-prem solution as per company's regulations. The UI and the feel are very old. And maybe the end users need too much skills and training to get work on it. But after some sort of training period, users can work on it easily. But it's not that good on GUI, like the new Oracle system on the cloud.

So, I would like to see the UI improved and more automated reporting that doesn't require customization from our side.

I have been using it for a year and half. 

It is a stable product.

It is easy to scale, I can use it in a huge environment.

There are more than 500 end users. 

We have our internal support team that we deal with. We don't know if they're dealing with Oracle or not.

Microsoft is easier to get onboarded on and get trained on than ours.

Advantages of Oracle: The features, reporting, and maybe the stability.

I would recommend the Oracle Fusion Cloud, if it's legal as per the company's regulations, have their data on the Oracle Cloud.

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

My main use case for Oracle CRM is managing leads. I input all relevant information about the leads, such as company details, contacts, and pain points. Then, I schedule meetings to understand the company's needs better, provide demos or presentations if necessary, and negotiate proposals. If everything goes well, I aim to close the deal.

The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically enrich deals by connecting to APIs. This allows me to gather additional information about companies, number of employees, and data from the previous year. Having this information helps me understand the size of the company better and tailor my proposals accordingly.

Improvements could be made in automating certain tasks, such as automatically notifying me via email when a customer has signed off on a proposal. Some of these features require payment, but including them in the basic package for smaller companies would be beneficial. 

If I'm reaching out to a retail food company, I could request the solution to conduct research and provide me with the name and contact information of the marketing director

I have been using the product for seven years. 

I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate Oracle CRM's scalability as a ten out of ten. My company has around 20 users. 

The tool's deployment is easy. You need to plug in some APIs. I rate it a six out of ten. You would need one to two resources to handle it. 

Oracle CRM's deployment was done in-house. 

You can get around 50 percent of the investment as ROI. 

The tool's pricing involves a monthly subscription fee based on the number of users. I believe it's around $20 per user initially, and then an additional five dollars per user if more users are added.

I rate the overall solution a seven to eight out of ten. 

We do use a customized version of the solution. We use the solution as a finance HRM and for procurement, satellite management, security management, project planning and project monitoring. Our use case is very broad.

The solution works well, and I haven't had any issues with performance. 

The user interface has been good overall. 

It has a wide variety of use cases.

We can customize the solution to fit our needs. 

It is stable.

The solution can scale. 

The cost can be a bit more expensive compared to other options. 

We've used the solution for ten years now.

The solution is stable, and the performance is good. It's reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It does not crash or freeze. I'd rate the stability eight out of ten. 

That said, the stability could be a bit better.

This is a global solution that is used by our entire organization. It's quite big. We have about 10,000 users on the solution. 

The solution is very scalable. We have it quite customized so that it fits our exact needs.

I'm not sure if the company has plans to increase usage. However, if staff needs increase, usage will increase.

We have a dedicated team handling support. I've never had to reach out to support. I'm not sure what the workload is like. 

I have not used any other comparable product.

I was not involved in the initial setup process. 

I am not part of the team that manages and maintains it. I'm not sure how big the managing team is.

I don't have visibility on the costs. That said, my understanding is that the solution is expensive. 

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. We have a team that maintains it directly. I am simply an end-user.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We use the solution to approach potential customer from the prospection to the sale.

We are able to take back control of our client sales information and analyze it for the future to improve.

The solution is very easy to use. Before we used this solution all of our customer data was stored on the vendor's database but now we have the data for all the customer in our corporate database. We have information about credit, sales, potential sales, and sending location information because some of them had more than one locations. The product has a lot of predictive analytics that are not a lot of effort. There is a lot to analyze regarding customer information and we can get detailed reports.

In the planning area in order to calculate commissions the function could be improved. Currently, we are not using that functionality because it is very basic. For example, in some cases, you need to develop your own formulas which are not easy to do. Another future addition that would help us is for this solution to have the ability to add more locations as ERP allows.

I have been using the solution for a year and a half.

The solution is stable and we are currently using it with 50 employees. Some of the roles of the employees using the solution are from the management, analytics, marketing, and research teams.

The solution is scalable.

The technical support for this solution and for all the solutions from Oracle is more or less the same. They have a very robust platform where you can put your questions, your needs, the issues that you have and they will respond. The SLA are very. They support agents from around the world that can help, we have had agents from Mexico, U.S., Europe and from India. It is a 24 hour, seven days a week service.

The setup was easy but it could have been better with integration with ERP.

Oracle CRM Cloud in our experience, the integration is not simply, that being said, it could have been harder too. It took us three to six months to implement and to do the full ERP implementation it took around 9 to 10 months. We used a vendor to do the deployment.

We were able to get a ten-year contract for a very good discount with our three platforms together with Oracle. If you have many Oracle products, you can get a cheaper rate perhaps as we did. The cost was around $400 a year. There also was implementation costs that are an addition to the solution price.

We saw some information from Gartner and Nucleus Research, they have a good evaluation for Oracle CX. That is why we understood while we have Oracle ERP, we need to install Oracle CX. That is the reason what we choose Oracle CX, Oracle CRM. We wanted a solution that would work well together.

I recommend the product, but only if you are planning to have a longterm contract.  I understand that there are other solutions on the market and they might be cheaper but if you like to have a long-term contract and you like to integrate Oracle is the best option.
Furthermore, If you don't have the intention to integrate with any ERP, then this is one of the best options, together with Salesforce. In our case, we prefer to have the product for the same vendor. That's why we didn't choose Salesforce, even though Salesforce might have a better recommendation or a better ranking. Both of them, Salesforce and CX are on the top five worldwide and in the Cloud.

We are planning to put CX in another plant during this next year, 2021. And we are very happy with the product.

I rate Oracle CRM a nine out of ten.

We use the solution for request management, call center case management, and contact management. We also do some campaign management.

Case management, incident management, and request management features are valuable.

Oracle does not look after its products. There are no new releases of Siebel. Fusion CRM lacks a lot of functionalities. Oracle CRM has become less functional than before. We have a lot of customization. We want to avoid customizations and go with a straightforward process. It’s complex to customize the tool. We need expert resources. Even if the resources are good, bugs are found. It takes a lot of time to face the challenges.

I have been using the solution for ten years.

The solution is very stable. Once we set it up and implement it, we have no issues. We only need to overcome the challenges during installation first. Later, it becomes stable.

I rate the product’s scalability an eight out of ten. It has a lot of capabilities. Almost 100 people use the tool in our organization. We have outsourced the maintenance of the solution. We need one person to maintain the tool.

The initial setup of Siebel is simple, but we need a high-availability environment. We also need a lot of effort. It is easy if we go with a single node environment or a normal environment. In a high-availability environment, it's complex. EBS implementation is very difficult. We find many patches and issues during the implementation of EBS.

The product’s pricing is very high. I rate the pricing an eight out of ten.

We are evaluating Salesforce. It is the number one product in the market for CRM.

Oracle is focusing on Fusion CRM. Overall, I rate the product a seven out of ten.

Our extensive client portfolio includes universities, enterprises, and government clients.

The reporting features are valuable.

The configuration requires a lot of technical intervention.

I have been using the solution for five years. I am working with the latest version of the solution.

I rate the product’s stability an eight out of ten. We encountered some glitches.

I rate the product’s scalability a four out of ten. We faced some issues with the scalability. Our customers have around 500 users.

We have to wait for a long time to get a response from the support team.

Neutral

The initial setup was very complex. I rate the ease of setup a seven out of ten. The deployment took two days.

We worked with Oracle Support to deploy the tool.

The solution is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten on a scale where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

We would recommend the solution only for enterprise clients. It is not suitable for small and medium businesses. It is a good solution. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

Regarding use cases, we use it as a customer relationship management tool in our call center. Also, it is used for field purposes like campaigns and to get sales percentages.

The most valuable features of the solution I like are its stability and customization.

Customization is an area in the solution that takes too much time. So, it needs to be improved. Also, the upgrades related to customization are another problem.

I have been using Oracle CRM for about two years. I am a customer of the solution.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

When we needed Oracle support, we got it. But most of the support is handled by the vendor. The license included the support, but actually, we were already contacting Oracle itself.

On a scale of one to ten, where one being difficult and ten being easy setup, I rate the setup a two. The setup is challenging and difficult.

The implementation and customization took a year and a half.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a twelve. Oracle CRM is on the expensive side.

I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.