SANTA CLARA, Calif., October 23, 2007 - On-demand collaboration applications and services leader WebEx, now part of Cisco®, and Oracle, the world's largest enterprise software company, today announced that they will offer Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand Service, an award-winning customer relationship management (CRM) application service, through the WebEx Connect application ecosystem. CRM On Demand by Oracle delivered by WebEx combines Cisco WebEx's on-demand collaboration expertise with Oracle's enterprise-class Siebel CRM On Demand Service, to create a collaborative CRM designed to accelerate sales cycles at businesses of any size.
According to Gartner Group, the worldwide CRM sector is expected to exceed $7.4 billion in 2007, climbing to $11.4 billion in 2011. Growth for on-demand CRM solutions is projected to be twice the rate of the overall CRM sector.
"Together, Oracle and Cisco WebEx have the integrated solution that companies need to manage their customer relationships and make it easy to do business cost effectively online," said Erica Ruliffson, group vice president, Siebel CRM On Demand North America sales.
WebEx Connect enables a new generation of collaborative business applications and services. The WebEx Connect client allows users to build mashup applications customized for particular business processes from on-demand, on-premise or on-the-desktop applications. For example, a WebEx Connect user can quickly build a sales mashup with WebEx Sales Center, Siebel CRM On Demand, a social networking site, and an e-mail and calendaring client. These business mashups improve productivity by integrating with WebEx Connect's unified collaboration and communications capabilities to provide contextual collaboration within a business process.
"Effective collaboration accelerates any business cycle, and when combined with CRM, brings salespeople closer to their customers," said Subrah Iyar, vice president and general manager, Cisco WebEx. "This alliance brings together three fast-moving trends: enterprise 2.0 mashups, the explosive CRM area and on-demand application platforms."
WebEx CRM On Demand by Oracle delivered by WebEx allows sales professionals to manage their entire sales process from within a single collaborative application suite. Users can easily market, demonstrate, present, track, forecast and close with the combined capabilities of WebEx collaborative applications and Siebel CRM On Demand.
WebEx CRM On Demand by Oracle delivered by WebEx offers a comprehensive set of CRM capabilities including:
- Sales management tools that allow users to engage prospects at key points in the sales process
- Sales dashboards that consolidate critical information and streamline activities for a 360-degree view of every opportunity
- Integrated reporting to improve sales productivity by automatically tracking WebEx meetings and prospecting activity
- Powerful forecasting, reporting and pipeline visualization tools to analyze sales data
- Real-time process management to optimize sales methodologies with testing and analytical feedback
CRM On Demand by Oracle is available today from the Cisco WebEx sales organization; it is scheduled to be available through the WebEx Connect application ecosystem in early 2008. For more information, go to, http://www.webex.com/smb/oracle-crm.html
On November 6, WebEx will host a free webinar on accelerating sales cycles with collaborative CRM. To register, please visit, http://www.webex.com/web-seminars/view_event/667110863
WebEx and Oracle will both be presenting how they are integrating the power of Web 2.0 technologies with proven sales techniques to increase sales velocity and volume at the upcoming Sales 2.0 conference, www.sales20conf.com
About WebEx Connect
WebEx's CRM On Demand by Oracle delivered by WebEx is one of the many applications users will be able to access through their WebEx Connect and its grid of applications. Announced in September 2006, WebEx Connect will enable users to integrate data from multiple applications into collaborative workspaces, custom designed for their particular workflows and business processes. Unlike traditional transactional applications, WebEx Connect is designed to improve productivity by enhancing collaboration and interaction between individuals. By using open Web 2.0 protocols and collaborative WebEx applications programming interfaces (APIs), WebEx Connect will make it easy to adapt on-demand, desktop, and enterprise applications to create composite, "mashup" applications.
About Oracle
Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.
