Oracle's Prescription for Pharma Contact Centers

Oracle connects its Siebel Contact Center application to its Oracle Adverse Event Reporting System, targeting pharmaceutical companies. Software conglomerate Oracle Corp. has added a vertical-specific solution to its contact center options for the pharmaceutical industry. The Siebel Contact Center Integration Pack (CCIP) for Oracle Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS), available now, is designed to aid the capture, reporting, and management of adverse events and product complaints, a mission-critical effort in that sector.

The CCIP is designed not only to help pharmaceutical companies streamline the handling of adverse events, but also to bolster data integrity. Oracle AERS is the company's solution for product-safety monitoring and compliance for the medical-device and pharmaceutical industries. The CCIP is the latest addition to the company's Oracle Application Integration Architecture (OAIA), a set of products that integrate proprietary, third-party, and custom applications, and leverages the Oracle Fusion Middleware services-oriented architecture (SOA) suite.

"Siebel Contact Center Integration Pack for Oracle AERS seamlessly passes customer, product complaint and potential adverse event information from Siebel Contact Center to Oracle AERS, automatically escalating reports, as appropriate," says Neil de Crescenzo, group vice president of healthcare and life sciences at Oracle. "These capabilities drive faster event processing to help pharmaceutical and medical-device manufacturers promptly report accurate adverse event and complaint information to the appropriate safety and regulatory [groups] for further evaluation."
The integration pack's closed-loop solution facilitates compliance and more effective management, according to de Crescenzo. "To help ensure product safety, [companies in this sector] are required by regulatory agencies to track and report potential product issues and adverse events both during clinical trials and after a product is introduced to the market," he says. "Rapid detection of events and issues is critical to safety and compliance. Pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers receive [this] information...from many different channels. Without a closed-loop solution, information on potential product issues or adverse events coming into a contact center has to be collected and then re-entered into an organization's [AERS] -- a process that can be time-consuming and costly."

In addition to its benefits in helping ensure public safety and reducing compliance expenses, the CCIP automatically loads event-related information from Siebel Contact Center into Oracle AERS and updates it to reflect changes, facilitating faster and more efficient reporting, de Crescenzo says. "The solution reduces duplicate data entry and provides life sciences organizations with complete, accurate, and synchronized information, helping to reduce costly conflict resolution and reconciliation."

"Pharmaceutical and medical-device manufacturers are challenged to cost-effectively ensure compliance within an increasingly complex web of regulations, while working to improve overall operational efficiency and accelerate delivery of safe and effective products to market," says Eric Newmark, research manager at Health Industry Insights, an IDC company. "Automated adverse-event and product-complaint systems can facilitate faster and more efficient reporting, which, in turn, helps to ensure public safety, reduce organizational liability, and contain the cost of compliance."

Author: Coreen Bailor @ destinationCRM.com

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Oracle buys compliance vendor LogicalApps

Oracle sees a growing market for compliance monitoring and has bought LogicalApps, whose compliance software is already optimized for use with Oracle apps. Oracle plans to expand its governance and compliance offering with the acquisition of LogicalApps, announced on Tuesday.

LogicalApps' software helps companies manage compliance with complex regulations. Its technology enables real-time detection, prevention, monitoring, and reporting of financial and operational risk. The software is embedded in enterprise applications and can prevent the misuse of customer data or financial fraud by, for example, preventing employees from processing unsigned requisitions or ensuring they don't inappropriately change financial information.

According to Oracle, a growing range of companies must comply with an increasing number of regulations, in addition to the financial requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley, creating demand for compliance products.

LogialApps' software is already optimized for use with Oracle applications, and the company has made "hundreds" of deployments of the software, it said.

The companies did not disclose financial details of the deal, which is expected to close next month.

Oracle will continue to support LogicalApps' customers after the acquisition and plans to continue to invest in development of the software, Oracle said.

The acquisition is in line with a strategy Oracle discussed when it released financial results in September. At the time, Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison said the company plans to look for continued growth in its applications business by selling a wider array of products mainly to existing large customers. The strategy is different than that of some of Oracle's competitors, which instead appear to be chasing smaller businesses with scaled-down versions of existing products, he said.

Author: Nancy Gohring @ IDG News Service

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Oracle rival SAP to pay $6.8 billion for Business Objects

SAP, the big German software company that competes with Oracle, has agreed to buy Business Objects, a leader in the fast-growing market for business intelligence software, for $6.8 billion.

The move underlines the appeal of companies that make software used to cull through the huge stores of data that corporations accumulate on their own and over the Web to search for insights to help them cut costs, spot sales opportunities and outwit rivals.

Makers of business intelligence software have become takeover targets in recent months. The largest previous deal came in May when Redwood City software maker Oracle bought Hyperion Solutions, a Santa Clara business intelligence software company, for $3.3 billion.

The deal is a departure from SAP's longtime approach of shunning big acquisitions. But in a conference call Sunday, SAP Chief Executive Henning Kagermann said the purchase of Business Objects, which has dual headquarters in Paris and San Jose, was an exceptional case.

"It's a fast-growing market - business intelligence," Kagermann said.

Thomas Hofmann, an analyst at Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg in Stuttgart, Germany, said the deal is "a dramatic shift in strategy" for SAP. "They're really moving toward the direction of Oracle and maybe that's because they're feeling Oracle is coming closer."

Business Objects had been rumored to be a takeover target for more than a month. Its share price had risen about 15 percent in the last few weeks, as SAP, Oracle and IBM were all said to be interested in buying the company.

The SAP offer of 42 euros a share in cash is roughly 20 percent above last week's closing price for Business Objects and places a value of more than 4.8 billion euros ($6.8 billion) on the company.

In its most recent quarter, Business Objects reported a 23 percent increase in sales, to $363 million, while profit rose 68 percent to $66 million.

Business Objects CEO John Schwarz said in the conference call that 40 percent of his company's customers are SAP customers. "We have a tremendous opportunity to align and package solutions together," he said.

SAP, analysts say, needs to add more capabilities to its business software to increase sales and prompt customers to buy new versions. The promise that business intelligence software might be able to glean insights from the data flowing through SAP's enterprise software could justify the price of the Business Objects purchase, analysts say.

The goal, Kagermann said, was to put "better analytics" into "our end-to-end business process software." He said he did not anticipate cutting Business Objects' workforce.

The $18-billion-a-year business intelligence market is increasingly moving into the hands of larger companies. Microsoft has made a big push into business intelligence in the last two years.

Author: Steve Lohr @ New York Times

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