Oracle Advances Price Management Strategy With Deal

Deal Management furthers Oracle’s strategy of delivering a complete price optimization and management suite. Be aware that Oracle offers separate modules for Siebel and EBusiness Suite. On 14 April 2008, Oracle announced the availability of Deal Management, a software module that is designed to enforce pricing practices and provide tools to aid deal negotiation processes.

Deal Management represents an initial step by Oracle in executing its strategy to offer a complete pricing software suite. Announced in November 2007, Oracle’s strategy is to deliver by 2009 modules under the Price Management brand that address price analytics, price optimization and price execution functions for E-Business Suite and Siebel. This strategy marks a shift from Oracle’s traditional focus on price execution as an option bundled with order management and quoting applications. Deal Management complements existing price execution capabilities for managing price lists and communicating prices, with additional functionality for:

* Reviewing deal elements via price waterfall analyses
* Pricing reviews by line items
* Deal profitability analysis
* Price recommendations for structuring deals
* Approval workflow and policy enforcement

Oracle has stated that Deal Management was built on Fusion Middleware and supports Siebel CRM 8.0, E-Business Suite 11.i.10 and Release 12. It has not disclosed that separate products were released for Siebel and E-Business Suite as an interim measure to expedite market entry. Oracle is currently developing Price Management for two application suites that eventually will be consolidated into one offering:

* One for Siebel, with modules called Price Performance Analytics, Price Planning, Price Administration, Dynamic Pricer and Deal Management
* Another for E-Business Suite, with modules entitled Price Performance Analytics, Price Planning, Advanced Pricing and Deal Management


The Price Performance Analytics and Price Planning modules will be shared between suites, but the Deal Management modules differ:

* Siebel Deal Management is written in Siebel code and embeds software that Oracle acquired from Revenue Technologies for price waterfall analysis, determining profitability and pocket margin and providing discount guidelines.
* Deal Management for E-Business Suite was developed separately in Java and PL/SQL, but includes intellectual property from Revenue Technologies for enforcement and authorization workflows and analytics for scoring deals.

The presence of Revenue Technologies and Siebel code may mean more of a migration than an upgrade, should customers eventually migrate to Fusion.

Author: Michael Dunne @ www.gartner.com

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