Rob Smyth's Blog

For anybody interested in using Siebel for Court Case Management an interesting paper has been published by one of our pratners HCL on this very topic.

It is called:
Judicial Departments Ride the CRM Wave – CRM's New Avatar : Siebel Case Management Solution.
You can find it from the link here, note that registration is required.
http://www.hcltech.com/white-papers/index.asp?id=1211992433015

Oracle has recently announced the next wave of computing, catchily entitled iGovernment. To see the innovations check out:

http://www.oracle.com/goto/igovernment/

My particular interest is of course in improving service delivery. More information here:
http://www.oracle.com/industries/government/case-management-crm-government.html

Delving a little deeper, the new functions in the Case Management area shows how a family centric view of the child is met within Siebel Public Sector:
http://www.oracle.com/industries/government/oracle-solution-child-support-br.pdf

One of the benefits of acquiring products with a view to how well they fit together is that quite often two good products come with a ready made integration.

It's a couple of years since Siebel was acquired, but only in March 2008 did we announce the purchase of testing products from Empirix.

For those in the know, this represents a solution for testing Siebel both for load and functionality. More information is available in the Application Quality section of our Enterprise Manager solution:
http://www.oracle.com/enterprise_manager/application-quality-solutions.html

You will note that the solution is for all web based applications. For Siebel there are accelerators as well that understand the application.

Two interesting papers have been released showing how CRM On Demand can help new customers quickly get up and running with On Demand solutions. Business & Enterprise North East are based in Seaham, England.

The snapshot is here:
http://www.oracle.com/customers/snapshots/business-and-enterprise-north-east-crm-snapshot.pdf

and a full case study here:
http://www.oracle.com/customers/snapshots/business-and-enterprise-north-east-crm-case-study.pdf

With the fanfare that accompanied the new Apple Appstore, I trust that you have all downloaded a whole bunch of productivity tools and the odd game or two. Well, hidden in the 500+ apps is an Oracle one.

Oracle Business Indicators

Enjoy!

Hi, if anybody is interested, Oracle will be hosting an Immigration Industry Forum for Immigration Case Management and working in September in Amsterdam. Details will appear soon on oracle.com but in the meantime if you are interested leave me a message and I will forward the invite on.

Here in the UK, we are doing some work on Case Management in government with a local newspaper, The Guardian. The report is due out by the end of July and you can register your interest here:

Case Management in the Public Sector: Exclusive Report from The Guardian and Oracle

or you could buy the paper!

Well, you mention Social CRM and then up pops a new Oracle blog:

Social CRM

How social is that!

Everbody knows what business applications.  Forms based, mainly blue and white, if they need to be high volume then keystroke based as well as mouse pointing.  Expense systems spring to mind.

Well, my children are in exam mode at the moment and in a few years they will be looking for jobs.  What do they use in IT?  iTunes, Messaging, Google, facebook, bebo, picasa, Nintendo wii's and iPods.  They will expect much more from their computing experience.

Oracle know this and are moving towards solving the problem.  The first area to be affected is of course the "front office".  First to step forward is CRM and its user interface.  Do you  know what this is:

It's the embedded Sales Library view in Siebel!

More information is available in this data sheet here:
Social Crm Applications

I am often asked, what exactly does a Sales Consultant do?
This question comes from friends, my children, my wife; and rather scarily from colleagues.

Well today, I have just finished for the week and I thought I would reprise the type of activity I have done:

Monday - Early train to London

• Meet with a partner to discuss Siebel CRM in the context of a larger SI programme.
• Internal discussions on upcoming release of software
  
• Debate on whether I should be going to Kazakhstan
• Discussion on best method for modelling a customer's objects in Case Management

• Review notes on an internal training course
• Discuss my accounts with Sales Consultants in Technology and Enterprise Applications
• Determine last minute scope of solution for a customer across CRM, ERP and Technical Product plus Consulting Implementation and possible use of On Demand
• Produce revise cost models for a proposal

• Follow up from costs discussion of the previous evening
• Brief team member on three customer opportunities
• Take a handover of an integrated web service demo for the following week
• Prep for Thursday meeting in Liverpool
• Check expenses have been paid
• In the evening off to Chester to see another team member appear in his new Band

• A customer meeting to discuss Case Management and Call Centres.
• Beforehand a couple of technical questions were raised.  So a few calls around my old team (I used to work in technology for years) to get the up to date answers
• Drop a colleague off somewhere close to Liverpool Lime Street Train Station
• Off home, continue to work on cost proposals

• Into my local office (first time in February - lucky it was a leap year)
• Set voicemail.
• Catch up on all actions that I haven't managed to get done.
• Preparation meeting for next week's customer meetings
• Book travel.
• Check I have been paid - it is the end of the month.
• Fill in my time sheet, making sure I record the write type of effort against the right account, hopefully with an opportunity.