Oracle pitches sales software

Oracle (ORCL) today debuted a new applications bundle targeted at the growing sales force automation market.

Oracle Sales and Marketing (OSM) is an applications suite intended to provide users with customer relationship management integrated with existing "back office" financial, human resources, and manufacturing business applications, the company said.

OSM is an example of a new breed of business applications broadly labeled Technology-Enabled Selling, a model defined by the Gartner Group for combining various technologies that allow for sales force automation and technology-enabled telephone sales in order to increase a company's profits.

OSM gives users sales management tools to analyze and forecast corporate sales and manage revenue, while enabling sales representatives to speed the flow of product and sales data throughout their company. When accessing the product data through the package, users can provide customer needs assessments and track product as it flows through the pipeline, as well as manage sales quotas and closing sales situations, according to the company.

OSM features a number of automation tools including Web-based expense reporting, integrated order entry, sales quotes, integrated contact management, sales analysis tools, and account and territory management.

Yankee Group analyst Chris Selland said Oracle is making a pitch to lead the sales force automation market. "With this release they seem to be making a serious push to establish themselves more in the market," he said. "What's interesting is they may push some of the smaller companies in this market into the arms of Microsoft." Selland said Oracle's competitors may look to Microsoft to provide server software in order to beef up their sales force automation packages.

The base OSM system is priced from $12,500. User licenses are $2,500 each, according to a company spokesman.