IDEA Uses Oracle

Oracle today announced that IDEA Cellular Limited, a leading mobile operator in India and a part of the Aditya Birla Group, has selected Oracle's Siebel CRM to deliver a unique customer service experience to pre- and post-paid mobile subscribers across its entire operations in India. IDEA's strategic outsourcing partner, IBM, will undertake the implementation, which on completion is expected to address challenges arising from IDEA's extensive channel and dealer network and meet its fast-expanding customer base.

IDEA is focused on enhancing the customer experience and service delivery, and plans to increase its customer base rapidly over the next three years from its existing 22 million subscribers. The operator currently provides mobile services in 11 areas with plans to expand into two new areas -- Mumbai and Bihar. With the help of its IT infrastructure outsource partner, IBM, IDEA will adopt an enterprise-wide CRM system spanning all lines of business in India. A sign of convergence, this is the first time a communications company in India will use a single CRM solution to provide customer service to both its pre- and post-paid customers.

IDEA chose Siebel CRM over competing applications for several reasons including the extensive out-of-the-box communications-specific functionalities, coupled with Oracle's superior architecture, flexibility and scalability.

"IDEA has been on the forefront of adapting cutting-edge technology to exceed customer service expectations. In doing so, we have adopted a collaborative approach to partner with the best-in-class application technologies available to streamline and enhance our business processes. I am confident that all IDEA customers will benefit significantly from our selection of Oracle's Siebel CRM, and our decisions to converge pre- and post-paid care, a first in the Indian communications industry," said Prakash Paranjape, chief information officer, IDEA.

Source: www.lightreading.com

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What Microsoft can learn from Oracle: greed and market share

The consolidating world of enterprise software, Microsoft has much to learn. Oracle's Larry Ellison understands that proprietary software is a slow-growth business going forward, and positions his buying spree accordingly:

Mr. Ellison has explained his deals in language a third-grader could understand. At an investors' conference in 2006, he declared: "We want to be No. 1 in all the segments. This isn't vanity. The No. 1 software company in every segment makes all the money....We never buy anything where it doesn't put us in the No. 1 position or get us in such a strong No. 2 position that we think we can get to No. 1 very quickly....It's No. 1 or it's over."

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer? Perhaps embarrassed to have ambition anymore after too many bouts with the antitrust authorities, Ballmer explains Yahoo! and other acquisitions in terms of cost-cutting synergies and what-not. Namby pamby "we love customers" stuff. Since he announced his not-so-hostile takeover of Yahoo!, Microsoft's stock has been hit 11 percent.

For the biggest vendors, it's just a market share question, and Oracle has been rewarded for aggressively seeking market share for market share's sake. Its stock is up 67 percent in the last five years, while Microsoft's is up 24 percent.

So while Microsoft attempts to persuade the world that it just wants to befriend everyone, Oracle buys, fires thousands of people, and makes a lot of money in the process. Oracle's method isn't pretty and it's certainly not the only way (nor is it the way that I'd personally choose), but it has been effective.

For Microsoft to compete it may have to start owning up to its ambition. It wants market share. It wants dominance. It wants to remove customer choice. Just like Oracle.

It might as well tell it like it is.

Author: Matt Asay @ blogs.cnet.com

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ORACLE Magazine 2008

Traditional relational content, unstructured content, XML, 3-D spatial data—your enterprise is home to all kinds of information. Read how customers are using Oracle Database 11g to store all their data, simplify management, and improve systems performance.

ORACLE Magazine 2008
84 pages | Jan-Feb 2008 | PDF | 6 Mb

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