Oracle delivers strong CRM momentum in Asia Pacific

Oracle announced today that it continues to see accelerating adoption of its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and CRM On Demand solutions by customers across Asia Pacific.

Oracle is also seeing strong response from its partner base, in tandem with growing customer demand and market opportunity across Asia Pacific for Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand solution. The number of partners across the Asia Pacific region who have signed up as Siebel CRM On Demand resellers and implementation experts has grown significantly over the last 12 months, to more than 48 partners to date. Many more are in the process of validation.

"As the CRM market leader, Oracle provides the widest range of solutions, best practices and deployment options for customer service organizations," said Will Bosma, Vice President, Customer Relationship Management, Oracle Asia Pacific.

"Oracle is enabling organizations across Asia Pacific to transform into truly 'customer-centric' organisations by optimizing business strategies, people, processes and technology around their customers. Organisations in Asia Pacific increasingly recognise that customer satisfaction is driven by more than just meeting customer's needs.

It's about consistently exceeding customers' expectations, achieving customer loyalty and retention, uncovering new revenue opportunities, and having the right information to make appropriate service decisions at the right time for each customer."

According to independent analyst firm IDC's "Asia Pacific1 Semi-Annual Software Tracker, September 2007" report, Oracle is the number one CRM applications provider in Asia Pacific, based on software revenues in the first half of 20072. Oracle has more than 17% market share.

Oracle CRM offers users a superior ownership experience with a choice of multiple deployment options, ease of manageability and low cost integration. Oracle is uniquely positioned in the market with comprehensive capabilities that extend from front-office CRM to the back-office, across the extended supply chain and industry-specific requirements.

Oracle continues to deliver on its commitment to drive CRM product innovation. The latest release of Oracle's Siebel 8 builds on Siebel's unmatched industry-specific CRM solutions.

Siebel 8 delivers comprehensive industry solutions in public sector, communications, utilities, life sciences, financial services, insurance, manufacturing, high-technology, automotive and consumer packaged goods. For example in public sector, users can create, monitor and escalate incidents, enter and manage evidence while complying with government requirements with Case Management and Incident Management, both part of Siebel CRM Release 8.

Siebel 8 also includes extensive enhancements to Siebel Sales, Siebel Enterprise Marketing, Siebel Customer Order Management, Siebel Contact Center and Service, Siebel Universal Customer Master, and Siebel Self Service and eBilling applications.

Siebel 8 enables customer-driven business transformation with real-time insight at the moment of customer interaction, while helping to accelerate revenue growth through better-informed decisions.

With certification with Oracle Fusion Middleware, Siebel 8 also provides comprehensive support for Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) and out-of-the-box Web services-based integration. This simplifies integration between Siebel and other applications and services and accelerates web-based application development.

Siebel CRM On Demand delivers the industry's most complete, hosted CRM solution.

Based on more than 12 years of deep CRM expertise with more than 4.6 million CRM users and 5,000 CRM customers globally, Siebel CRM On Demand delivers the most comprehensive set of sales, marketing and service automation capabilities, in a software-as-a-service (SAAS) model, delivering value to users in a matter of days.

Siebel CRM On Demand provides unique features and functionality not offered by traditional SAAS vendors, including embedded analytics and a pre-built data warehouse to drive real-time decision making; a built-in virtual call center to support call agents without the need for telephony infrastructure; and middleware standards based integration. Siebel CRM On Demand also offers industry editions for wealth management, insurance, life sciences & automotive industries that help further reduce the time, labor and costs associated with configuration and accelerate time to value.

Oracle's Siebel CRM has been recognised by independent analyst firm, Forrester Research, as having the strongest current offering, in the latest Forrester Wave Evaluation: Enterprise CRM Suites, Q1 February 2007.

Forrester also names Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand, Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM and the Oracle E-Business Suite as strong performers in this report. Forrester Analyst, William Band said, "Siebel CRM provides a very strong and comprehensive architecture and platform supporting all typically necessary requirements.

By providing the broadest suite of CRM applications encompassing both cross-industry and deep vertical industry requirements, Siebel CRM provides the necessary best-of-breed CRM capabilities required to empower users in addressing customer needs."

Oracle continues to deliver on its "Applications Unlimited" program, by driving continued enhancements to the Oracle product lines, including Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards, as well as its Lifetime Support Policy for customers.

Oracle is also rolling out advanced integration capabilities with its Applications Integration Architecture and continues to strengthen the breadth and depth of the Oracle Applications portfolio with strategic acquisitions.

1 Asia Pacific includes Australia, PRC, Taiwan, HK, Korea, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore

2 See Press Release "Oracle Named Asia Pacific Leader in Customer Relationship Management" (Feb 15, 2008)