Oracle announces Oracle CRM on demand rel 19

Carter Lusher, Chief Analyst, Ovum

AUSTRALIA: Adding mobility to Oracle CRM On Demand Release 19 is a smart move as extending CRM to mobile workers, partners, and customers is no longer a ‘nice to have’ for early adopters, but a ‘must have’.

Enabling the use of tablets, as well smartphones, which Ovum forecasts will have 653 million shipments by 2016, is a critical capability that enterprise and public IT executives must do to satisfy the BYOD (bring your own device) crowd. Oracle has taken some of the burden off IT by building this capability into CRM On Demand.

Integration with Outlook is a good productivity enhancer for the enterprise as it is nearly ubiquitous and people hate having to switch from one program to another. Not only will this please the end user, but it will help IT reduce its support calls as most calls to the help desk is not over break-fix issues, but ‘How do I…’ questions about applications.

The ‘consumerisation of IT’ means that enterprise and public IT teams and their strategic vendors have to take into account their constituents’ - inside and outside the organisation -desire to access key organisational data and functions no matter where they are located. By building in mobile support into CRM On Demand, Oracle is making it easier to support mobile workers, customers, and partners in an efficient manner.