Oracle is not pulling stunts, it's being clever. That's the word from Oracle's Australia and New Zealand regional director CRM applications, Brett Kennedy.
Last week Oracle offered a free online sales force automation (SFA) service. Competitor Onyx's managing director labelled it a "stunt" (CW, September 4, p6).
"This is not a stunt. Onyx is obviously threatened by the service," Kennedy said.
"We think SFA is a commodity within an integrated CRM application; it is just one small part of the complete picture."
OracleSalesOnline.com delivers core sales applications of the Oracle E-Business Suite 11i as a free service.
Core functionality such as customer and pipeline management, calendaring and activity management will be free, with value-added functionality such as sales compensation, global sales forecasting, and expense and travel management offered on a pay-per-use basis.
The service was released in the US on August 28 and Kennedy said about 400 large to medium enterprises in 15 countries are actively managing their sales activities with the service.
Kennedy said he did not have "statistics on hand" as to how many were using the free version of the service or the value-added version.
Onyx managing director Australia and New Zealand, Mark Camilleri said "Anyone knows that you can't get apps on tap, you need to configure the system and work with the customer. The application side is only 15 per cent of project deliverables."