Oracle CRM Reviews

We mainly use CRM for voucher submission for our employees for performance tracking, appraisal, and vendor relations and billing.

An improvement would be to lower the price of the license.

I've been using Oracle CRM for more than ten years.

CRM's performance is good, we've never faced any issues with it.

We previously used PeopleSoft.

CRM was easy to install.

We used a vendor team.

The cost of a license with support is slightly higher than a regular license.

I would definitely recommend Oracle CRM to anybody thinking of using it, and I would rate it eight out of ten.

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

While using CRM I was a consultant making business analysis, high-level analysis making the implementation, and training the users on how to use the application. I was also doing testing and go-live with the production. I'd use it for requirement gathering from the customer and then map it to the application, implement it, fill the gaps, and make some workarounds. Sometimes we needed to use some development and then we tested it and put it live.

According to the business requirement itself, it must be valuable. It has good sales, marketing, and service aspects that we appreciate. We believe that Oracle is the most powerful service module over other products. It offers good customization. 

For the most part, the solution is straightforward.

In service, especially in contracts and with Field Service with integration with the spare parts, installment, and so on, spare management, in the second level is in sales, it could be a bit better. I don't find much improvement in marketing. They moved the improvements to cloud deployment for marketing.

I'd like to see more feature enhancements. For marketing, for example, I'd like to see integration with the general ledger enhancement. They already have the layout, however, they didn't put the functionality into it so far. For marketing, I want to have the marketing SMS campaign, and not have to customize all that from the beginning. I'd like to see everything integrated with social media. We'd like it to be easier to integrate any third-party app that we want - and not just Oracle apps. I'd like to see integration with Salesforce, Microsoft, SAP, etc.

I've dealt with the solution since 2007. I've used it in the last 12 months as a demo for clients. 

It's more stable in the application, especially when you are accessing it in your local network. If you have all your data and don't have these internet issues, it's stable. However, if you don't have an internet connection, no way you will be able to access the cloud. Unless there's a bug or something, it's reliable. 

The solution is scalable. It varies from module to module. For example, it scales well for sales and service more than marketing.

Technical support is great, They are very friendly. We could not survive without them. 

There are a lot of batches and technical issues. They must dig in each time we have an issue. At some point, they need to get involved. We're fine with that. They're helpful. No one can survive alone. We are like an integrated team. 

In our experience, 90% of the cases were sorted successfully. 10% of cases were related to some future enhancement or bugs. I cannot rate the consultant directly. Mostly, if the case is applicable to be solved, it is solved. Sometimes maybe it would take a very short time. Sometimes it would take longer as it was very complex or something. Sometimes it may have even been the case that it was the first time they faced the issue.

Positive

There are lots of other CRMs. We chose this one due to the fact that it had
old-school stability and we were able to have our data locally. It was also more flexible and made testing easier. 

For the most part, the solution is straightforward. For example, in 70% of the areas, it's straightforward to implement. However, there is about 30% of the implementation process is not straightforward at all.

The length of time the deployment takes depends on the project, for example, how many business units, the project business volume itself, how much customization, et cetera. It will never be less than, in the easiest deployment, three or four months.

I don't handle any aspects of the licensing. 

I installed the demo six months ago. I was using some variance of version 12. Eighter 12.0.8, 0.2, 0.8 or 0.9.

I recommend solutions according to the client's business needs. If they need something that is more flexible and giving them all that they need on-premise, I will advise them to get it. If they are needing a lot of functionality that's related to other products, or clouds, I will recommend other options that aren't Oracle.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use it to host customer links to the production environment. We also use it for a lot of levels. The solution is smooth, easy to use, easy to customize and it has many features. Plus, there are regular updates.

The one thing that I hate about it is when you pay for services for a certain amount of time, the service ends just before it should be over. For example, I may pay for a month of service, but it will tell me the service is over before the month ends.

In the next release, I would like to see more dashboard optimization. If possible, features like future planning and capacity calculation would be great to see included.

I have been using the solution for two years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable.

Their support team is very smooth, and even the support page portal offers great service if you are a customer.

Positive

It was very easy to set up. I think it took about one hour. The team needed for deployment depends on the customer requirements. If it's a larger deployment, you may need about three or four people, but if it's small, the deployment can be done by one individual.

The pricing for licensing is pretty expensive. If you need one particular feature it becomes expensive to have to continue paying for it. If the solution could improve the pricing plans, it would be better.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I use the solution to document customers’ data.

We can filter and find any data. It's very easy to find any customer-related data.

Usually, the product is slow. It takes time when we request data. We never get the data in a second or two. Processing, finding, and showing the data to the end user takes time. The product is not intuitive. It is not easy to work with. It is not a fast system. I have never got a quick response from the system. We need a lot of patience to work with it.

I have been using the solution for more than three years.

Usually, the tool is stable.

It is easy to scale the tool. A few hundred people in our organization use the solution.

I suggest people try using the product to see if it fulfills their needs. Oracle CRM can be a good solution for people with many end users and a lot of data they need to process. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

• Page layout
• Workflows
• Fields
• Tabs
• Web services
• Audit trail
• Related information
• Search
• Quick search lists
• Great performance and availability

It is relatively easy to centralize your services when using a cloud solution.

Easiness of onboarding new people and markets.

95% of business requirements can be met by making administrative configuration changes rather than development.

This allows you to bring customer satisfaction in short time rather than launching large project each time a new requirement will appear.

Support: My Oracle Support service, enhancement, bug fix roadmap, and planning, quick and modern global cross-search is missing.

We have been using this solution for six years.

There were minor stability issues that were always addressed in the agreed-upon RTO/RPO.

There were no scalability issues, but this is mostly about the architecture and how the system was rolled-out. This is not a reflection on the product itself.

We used many local solutions. We switched in order to centralize and globalize so we could achieve better business satisfaction and save on our budget.

The installation was straightforward. We set up the integration and configuration changes can be easily modified and adjusted.

Depending on the number of users, you can get an incredibly good offer compared to other products.

The product has very good quality to price, has a stable and powerful configuration, and allows your business to fulfill the required processes.

Oracle CRM is primarily used as a backend database for applications and for maintaining an archive of customer data.

Oracle CRM's most valuable features are that it can accommodate a large number of users and is fast and responsive.

Oracle CRM is very, very stable, one of the most stable products I've used in my career, and doesn't require much maintenance. However, a specialized team is required for managing Oracle, which is extra overhead for the customer.

This solution is very scalable - it can be scaled on the fly and be upgraded and downgraded.

Oracle's technical support is very good.

The initial setup is straightforward and fast if the person installing it is a professional. Unlike SAP, Oracle has a limited number of modules, making installation more straightforward.

Oracle is very expensive, but you have to pay to get this kind of scalability and database flexibility.

I wouldn't recommend Oracle CRM for everybody, but it's good for those with big requirements. I would rate CRM as eight out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is securing databases.

The solution could be cheaper.

We have been using this solution for approximately three years and are currently using version 19.3.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

I rate customer service and support ten out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The licensing is expensive.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good, but the pricing could be cheaper.