HP & Oracle Step Up To The E-Plate
HP and Oracle Corp. announced a series of memorandums of understanding (MOUs) aimed at expanding the companies' ability to jointly develop and deliver Oracle Internet solutions on the HP platform.
Oracle has stepped up its commitment to HP in a major way by making the HP platform an integral part of the Oracle development environment. As a result, Oracle plans to distribute HP servers throughout the development organization to further improve optimization and delivery of Oracle software on HP systems. In addition, Oracle is in the process of purchasing and installing a significant number of HP servers to power its data centers, and it will pre-configure and tune its BOL offering on HP systems.
HP, in turn, is making a major commitment to Oracle by licensing Oracle Sales software for its own Enterprise Computing field organization, and will begin implementation immediately. HP Enterprise Computing has an extensive worldwide sales force and expects to roll out the Oracle Sales solution to the field in February 2000. This alliance will effectively create the world's largest CRM sales force.
With the new systems in place, every HP and Oracle salesperson will be able to collaborate and share information in real time over the Internet, even from within the same customer record. At the same time, both management teams will have instant access to a greatly expanded view of the pipeline and an even more detailed, up-to-the-minute global sales forecast.
HP will also integrate and co-sell Oracle Sales as part of its comprehensive Internet solutions for the enterprise. HP customers can be assured of getting the very best sales-force automation software available, and existing Oracle customers can be assured of the tightest integration with HP technology. The sales tools will be accessed via the Internet and used by both HP and Oracle sales personnel to co-sell CRM solutions and share customer data, allowing better customer service and more rapid response times to the customer.
Oracle's CRM solutions are expected to be linked with HP Front Office, HP's CRM solution. HP Front Office is an open framework for integrating e-marketing, e-sales and e-support applications that give a complete view of the customer. With this integration, customers can deploy a seamless CRM solution and greatly improve their profit per customer transaction, customer services and overall efficiency.
Oracle's CRM offering is also expected to be integrated with HP's SmartContact, which offers solutions for building advanced customer-contact centers. The HP call-center solution is currently deployed worldwide in such key industries as banking and finance, telecommunications and public utilities.