The Bloor Perspective: Oracle has it all to do (again), ads that WILL get to you, and the CRM wars

The growing use of phones with WAP capabilities means this channel is more likely to be exploited with advertising. What is more, there are indications that most phone users will be happy to receive these adverts.

These indications come from SkyGo, a company that offers solutions for wireless interactive marketing. This can hardly be deemed to be an unbiased source but a survey that it carried out towards the end of 2000 showed around 60 per cent of its 1,000-strong sample found targeted advertising on mobile phones to be useful. Twenty-seven per cent (of the 60 per cent) even went as far as to say they would switch service providers to make sure they could receive the ads. SkyGo also indicates that the receipt of wireless adverts increases the likelihood of mobile phone users actually logging on to the web.

This all points to how important mobile phones are becoming to the CRM market. It is a new channel to most and they are investigating ways of making use of the limited display capabilities and poor bandwidth available to most devices. SkyGo seems to favour simple messages that provide details of offers, price reduction vouchers, audio adverts and simple messages - all with links to websites or email.

CRM vendors have a problem with 'push' marketing and its close relationship with spam. Every product that offers email marketing emphasises its 'permission-based approach'. That means that you have to supply your email address before you will receive the spam, sorry, marketing messages. The problem with telephone numbers is that they are easily reached simply by dialling sequentially. So, even if reputable businesses only send out messages with users' permission, how long is it before we are all inundated with adverts and SMS text messages on our mobile phones?

*Oracle's next big hurdle*

After taking the database market - well, sharing it with IBM's DB2 and Microsoft's SQL Server - Oracle's next venture is the business applications market. Oracle's offering is an integrated suite of business applications providing solutions for customer relationship management, procurement, human resources, financial management and every other need of the aspiring business. The idea is to be seen as superior to market leaders such as Siebel and i2 with an in-built integration capability making a purchase easier.

It appeared, for a while at least, that Oracle was making good inroads into the business application market. The company's recent earnings report tells a different story as sales grew by only a third of what the company's executives expected. The reason given for this turn around was that customers are hesitating in their purchases towards the end of a tight financial quarter.

A different story is being told outside Oracle. While is it agreed that current economic conditions can account for some shortfall, the state of the world's economies doesn't account for that much of an oversight. The real story - rather predictably - appears to be that the much-touted functionality of the applications suite is falling short of those solutions offered by individual vendors, and while integration is becoming an increasingly important issue in today's ever more complex IT architectures, it is the depth of functionality in individual applications that organisations are searching for.

Business applications contribute a far smaller proportion to Oracle's revenues than the database products, but with the database market approaching saturation Oracle and other database vendors are busy looking for other revenue opportunities. But expertise in one area of IT does not necessary give preferred supplier status in other areas, especially when up against established vendors offering mature products.

Oracle must ensure its products stand up against the best of the competition on their own merits without the integration argument. When they can achieve that, the integration capability becomes the compelling reason to buy. There is time to develop the product set - the current economic gloom means organisations are going to be reluctant to spend on new software. Once the economy turns around, organisations will be searching for applications that enable them to make the most of the new business opportunities of a revived economy and this is that target market that Oracle and other software vendors should focus on.

*Challenging Siebel's CRM*

PeopleSoft and Epiphany have made recent announcements about their CRM activities. It's not usually massively important news when that happens, but in this case the PR came with a twist because both parties stated they are now officially gunning for Siebel - but are either of them good enough to catch the market leader?

Start with PeopleSoft. It has just stated it is finally going to start doing something positive with the Vantive products it acquired over 15 months ago. Vantive has shown little progress in the market during this period as a result of the lack of attention that it has received. PeopleSoft is now aiming to address this failure on its part by concentrating on CRM and actively seeking acquisitions that will boost its offerings. The new capabilities will include the Customer Interaction Center (CIC) plus mobile/WAP features.

In the meantime, the ever-acquisitive Epiphany has opened up collaborative channels with ChannelWave Software and Comergent Technologies. These will allow it to enhance its demand chain offerings with better facilities for partnership management and B2B sales. When tied in with the personalisation that helped Epiphany to make its name, and the eCRM capabilities that it acquired with Octane and sales applications to be acquired with Moss Software, then it is clear that - technically - it has the tools to meet the needs of just about any CRM requirement.

According to recent figures, however, Siebel is leading the market with a 20 per cent share. The following bunch of Nortel/Clarify, Oracle and PeopleSoft are back on about five or six per cent and the rest pale into insignificance.

Much of Siebel's dominance comes from being the leader at the time when the CRM market exploded. Its success is as much down to good marketing as it is attributed to its technology. But Siebel could well see Epiphany creeping up on its blind spot.