Oracle, Siebel ship major upgrades

Enterprise software giants Oracle and Siebel Systems last week followed through on commitments to release upgrades to key products. Oracle enhanced its JD Edwards offering, whereas Siebel added marketing to its CRM OnDemand application.

Delivering on a pledge made when it acquired PeopleSoft earlier this year, Oracle announced the A7.3 Service Pack 16 release, an upgrade for users of the JD Edwards World solution.

Oracle’s Service Pack 16 upgrade to JD Edwards World suite adds three self-service modules.

The first gives its enterprise users the capability to access and change orders and view payments. A second supplier self-service module allows vendors to view purchase orders, inventory levels, and payments due.

The third self-service component targets company employees, allowing them to interact with the company HR application, record life change events, and enroll in programs.

Meanwhile, rival Siebel expanded its CRM software as a service offering by announcing Release 8, the fifth upgrade within 12 months.

One of the major new capabilities added to Release 8 is the Segmentation Wizard, said Keith Raffel, group vice president of OnDemand Products at Siebel.

The Wizard will allow users to import leads from outside data sources such as Dun & Bradstreet or Hoover’s, increasing leads for a sales or marketing campaign. Using analytics, the module also “slices and dices” different aspects of opportunities and accounts for more targeted marketing campaigns.

Industry analyst Elizabeth Herbert at Forrester Research called the segmentation wizard the most notable part of the upgrade. “Traditionally, hosted CRM services have specialized in one area, such as sales force automation. Siebel is becoming a full on-demand CRM provider, adding call center capability earlier this year and now marketing capability,” Herbert said.