Oracle Upgrade Enhances Sales ProcessesOracle Upgrade Enhances Sales Processes

Oracle is unveiling a new version of Oracle Sales, an application suite that automates business processes across all sales and customer interaction channels. The latest version, unveiled Wednesday, is designed to enhance sales operations productivity by streamlining processes such as proposal generation, quote creation, and call-center selling. The goal of the upgrade, the company says, is to shift the focus of sales-force automation toward individual sales-rep effectiveness.

Sales applications typically place most of their focus on functions such as forecasting and deal tracking, which help managers understand their teams' performance. But that strategy hasn't worked, says John Wookey, Oracle's senior VP of applications development. "We've realized over the last 18 months that sales-force automation implementations weren't being adopted because the tools were architected around needs of sales management, not the needs of the sales rep. This version focuses on tools for helping reps be more productive."

To that end, Oracle Proposals has been added to the suite. The application generates customer-ready personalized proposals from templates for sales professionals, automating the process of creating customer proposals by letting reps select from a list of predefined, preapproved proposal templates that include workflow and compliance rules specific to the company. The rep then can customize that proposal to the individual customer and have it automatically submitted to the customer via E-mail, mail, or fax. Oracle Proposals tracks which proposals are sent to which customers, allowing reps to monitor not only their interactions with their prospects, but also the effectiveness of various proposal formats.

Oracle has enhanced other areas of the suite. Oracle Quoting, which provides price quotes on items, has a new interface that consolidates all pricing information onto a single screen, and the incentive-management tool now is customizable so that reps can get quick views of what their commissions will be rather than spending selling time calculating their pay. Also, tighter integration with Oracle Order Management lets reps use external information to check the creditworthiness of their customers during the quoting process so there's no need to go back to rework quotes after the proposal has been accepted by the customer.

Many of the new features are available immediately, while others will be released next month. Customers can choose between full suite upgrades and piecemeal adoptions of the applications. Oracle lists pricing for all its applications at http://www.oracle.com.