Oracle Insurance introduces Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance

Oracle Insurance today introduced Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance, providing insurers the robust billing capabilities necessary to deliver streamlined, convenient billing, payment and collections processes, and improve service to customers and distribution channels.

Oracle's new solution enables insurers to meet the market demand for multi-channel strategies and increased cross-selling abilities by providing comprehensive and consolidated billing management capabilities.

The solution also helps insurers to improve enterprise revenue management, while efficiently supporting diverse lines of business on a single platform to reduce cost of ownership.

Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance is part of the Oracle Insurance solution footprint ? a complete, end-to-end offering that includes support for core insurance operations, distribution channels, corporate operations, IT and enterprise performance management.

Oracle will demonstrate Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance this week at the IASA Educational Conference & Business Show, booth 1011.

Built on an open, standards-based architecture, Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance minimises the manual back-office activities required to process bill inquiries and bill adjustments. It also easily integrates with existing policy administration, financial accounting and payment solutions to streamline business processes while incurring minimal costs.

The solution enables consolidated billing, providing a complete view of customer billing interactions to enable easy cross-policy adjustments that drive better customer satisfaction and retention.

Comprehensive Account Current and Group Bill Processing capabilities enable strong support for distribution channels and easy reconciliation for group bills, allowing faster cash realisation and lower write-offs.

Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance provides configuration-driven business rules that enable business users to quickly and easily implement changes to the billing system ? minimising the cost of bringing new offerings to market.

Web-based self-service and e-billing capabilities give customers, agents and brokers improved access to information and a choice of channels for conducting business with insurers ? helping to reduce the overall number of billing inquiries and bill adjustments, and increase overall customer satisfaction.

The solution provides comprehensive support for call centre operations. It gives call centre agents easy access to customer information, minimising average service call times. In addition, the application includes access to online help resources and scripts that model best practices, helping to lower training costs for call centre staff.

The system incorporates built-in business process management tools to ensure consistent interaction with customers and accelerate billing reconciliation.

Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance supports continued business growth for insurers by providing the scalability to handle customer bases ranging from a few thousand to millions in size.

In today's competitive insurance market, insurers must balance multiple challenges, including the need to improve revenue management and reduce IT total cost of ownership, while providing enhanced customer service that is critical to developing and maintaining long-term customer relationships and satisfying the agents and brokers that manage these relationships,” said Chuck Johnston, vice-president, Strategy and Alliances, Oracle Insurance Global Business Unit. “Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance delivers a robust and flexible solution that helps insurers to expand and optimise use of distribution channels while supporting diverse lines of business on a single, cost-effective billing platform. As important, the solution supports delivery of universal, best-in-class service that today's customers demand.”

Source: http://www.itweb.co.za

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Sun investors to vote on Oracle on July 16

Tune in on July 16 to see whether Oracle actually becomes the new parent of Sun Microsystems.

Sun's board of directors has set up a special shareholder meeting for that date to vote on the proposed merger with Oracle, according to a statement Sun released Monday. Sun's board, which has already okayed the merger, is urging stockholders to approve the deal--a majority vote is needed to push it through.

Shareholders can vote on the merger in person, at Sun's Web site, or through a proxy card received by mail. Assuming approval, it expects the merger to be completed over the summer.

The company has sent a proxy statement dated June 8 with full disclosure to all shareholders. Besides providing details on the vote and stockholder meeting, the statement reveals other interesting tidbits.

Severance pay
No details have been revealed about what will become of Sun management, though the proxy statement does discuss potential severance packages for Chairman Scott McNealy, President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz, and other high-ranking execs. If termination were to occur in August, McNealy would receive $9.5 million in total compensation, including severance, health benefits, and equity, while Schwartz would walk away with $12 million.

The courtship of Sun
The proxy statement also reveals blow-by-blow details of the battle to buy Sun, with other suitors besides Oracle in the mix. IBM had been widely rumored as a likely buyer of Sun, but the proxy material doesn't mention any suitors by name.

On November 6, 2008, the CEO of a Sun competitor, known in the statement as "Party A," approached Schwartz about a possible business combination. After initial discussions with Party A, Sun started shopping for other potential buyers, including "Party B." Sun continued its discussion with Party A, entering into a confidentiality agreement and permitting Party A to investigate Sun's finances.

By late December, Sun was serious enough about a potential merger to hire Credit Suisse as its financial adviser to help it consider different offers. On January 28, Party A proposed acquiring Sun for $8.40 to $8.70 a share. In early February, Sun discussed the proposal with its legal and financial advisers.

But by February 12, 2009, Party B was back in the picture as Sun resumed discussions with its other suitor, signing a confidentiality agreement and permitting due diligence for Party B to check into Sun's finances. On February 20, Party A boosted its offer for Sun to $10 a share, predicated on exclusive negotiations between the two companies.

By February 23, Oracle had entered the picture. McNealy spoke with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison about a possible transaction. Between February 22 and 26, Sun's board was busy setting up special meetings to discuss the proposal from Party A and the interest from Party B and from Oracle. Further conversations were held between McNealy and Ellison. But by February 26, Sun had decided to enter into an exclusive agreement with Party A and end discussions with all other companies.

Over the next month, Sun held lengthy meetings with Party A. But negotiations dragged on, and there was talk of ending the exclusivity agreement with Party A and resuming conversations with Party B and with Oracle. On March 12, Oracle sent Sun's board a letter expressing an interest in a limited takeover of certain Sun assets. However, Sun management opted to continue its agreement with Party A.

On March 29, Party A reduced its bid to $9.40 a share. After review, Sun management was worried about Party A's offer for various reasons, especially antitrust issues. Concerned about the price and terms of the agreement, Sun decided on April 4 to reject the offer from Party A.

By April 6, the board was back discussing potential deals with Party B and with Oracle. But on April 8, Party A jumped back into the ring, still interested in Sun. Now the board was at work again to discuss offers from all three companies.

By April 10, Sun and Oracle had entered into a confidentiality agreement, and the two met soon thereafter to hash out a possible transaction. On April 17, Party B opted out of the race. On the same day, Oracle sent Sun a draft merger proposal for $9.50 a share.

After the price per share became a sticking point between Sun and Party A, Sun's management finally approved a merger agreement with Oracle on April 19.

Now it's in the hands of the stockholders.

Author: Lance Whitney @ http://news.cnet.com

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With Virtual Iron, Oracle Bought a Big Loss

Did Oracle recently buy Virtual Iron, a maker of virtualization software, for its talent? Perhaps so, because the company certainly hasn’t been selling a lot of software, according to financial documents obtained by The Times.

The documents indicate that Virtual Iron had just $3.4 million in revenue last year. That’s a big rise over $1.5 million in 2007. But Virtual Iron sure spent a lot of money to get that revenue.

Its sales, marketing, research, development and administrative costs were $17.7 million last year, up from $13.6 million in 2007. So, in 2008, Virtual Iron posted a loss of $15.3 million.

Last January, Virtual Iron raised $20 million, hiking its total funding up to $65 million. Highland Capital Partners, Matrix Partners, Goldman Sachs, Intel Capital and SAP Ventures all funded the company.

Oracle has declined to reveal how much it paid for Virtual Iron, but with the revenue in 2008 sitting so low, it seems pretty clear that the investors lost out on this start-up — that is, unless Oracle was willing to pay many, many times Virtual Iron’s revenue. (The company did report $17 million in cash and equivalents in 2008.)

With the addition of Virtual Iron, Oracle has a crowded stable of virtualization products. Virtual Iron’s software will join Oracle’s own virtualization software, and soon enough Oracle will inherit even more virtualization software when it completes the purchase of Sun Microsystems.

The funny thing about these various software products is that they’re all based on the open source Xen project. So Oracle will own three products with the same guts.

Each company has made its own tweaks to Xen, leading to some differences among the products. Wim Coekaerts, Oracle’s vice president of Linux and virtualization engineering, said last week that the addition of Virtual Iron would let Oracle’s customers “more dynamically manage their server capacity and optimize their power consumption.”

Even with three sets of virtualization software on its side, Oracle has a long way to go to catch up with the market leader, VMware. Last year, VMware posted revenue of $1.9 billion.

Author: Ashlee Vance @ bits.blogs.nytimes.com

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