Rob Smyth's Blog

Extending E Business Suite to the Internet

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:48:58 -0800

So let's say you have an E Business Suite implementation, you run Financials - link this with Projects and Procurement and have Teleservice for when your suppliers want to talk to you. Now you have decided to embrace the internet and want to make your system work for your providers in that environment.

Here is a high level plan to do this:
1) Add iSupport, iSupplier Portal and EMail Center to enable the web and email channels
2) Add the Identity and Access Management Suite to ensure world class security

You may also want to integrate these business processes with other non-Oracle processes out there

3) add the SOA Suite for Business Process Management and bring the automated and people processes together using ADF to interact with E Business Suite

Follow the links for more information on the products that enable this

Maximizing Siebel Uptime

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:19:40 -0800

For all those of you who have a technical bent, we have published a white paper with our recommendations on how to devise an architecture to keep your Siebel application running. This is one of the many benefits of owning both the application and the technology stack.

Check out Reducing Siebel Downtime with a Local Standby Database

Siebel CRM 8.1.1

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:51:18 -0800

The new release of Siebel CRM is soon to be upon us and contains new features and functionality in the Public Sector space.

If you wish to attend the one hour launch, click this link.

Court Case Management

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:28:08 -0800

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

iGovernment

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:38:43 -0800

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

Testing CRM

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 01:28:05 -0800

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.

On Demand services in Public Sector

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:14:45 -0800

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

iPhone access to Oracle Applications

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:37:49 -0800

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!

Immigration Industry Forum

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:38:50 -0800

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.

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

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 05:36:16 -0800

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!

No longer a lone voice

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:25:33 -0800

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

Social CRM

How social is that!

Oracle Social CRM Applications

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:08:45 -0800

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

A Week in the Life

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:35:40 -0800

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

Tuesday - Customer Recruitment meeting cancelled. So I am free to:

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

Wednesday - Off to Birmingham

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

Thursday - Liverpool

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

Friday - Manchester

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.

Reading this back, it is obvious I like to work for my company! The variety is quite clear. Next thing I need to do is clone myself so I can get some free time. However here is some of the things I did in my free time:

Delayed watch of The Last Enemy (Identity Conspiracy Theory)
Read a few chapters of Willliam Gibson's Neuromancer.

So even with my leisure time, I failed to get away from work as I look after the Home Office and work with computers.

Two acquisitions: Siebel and Stellent

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:28:32 -0800

In Public Sector, there seems to be a common thread brewing in requirements. Good governance requires that any documents that are handled should also have some "chain of custody" applied to them. This idea seems to have taken off in light of the work done in the Finance industry and Sarbanes Oxley.

It is an area that Oracle is well placed for due to two recent acquisitions:

Siebel Public Sector vertical record all tasks and activities against service requests or cases or contacts (or even evidence for investigations) and any changes are listed in an audit trail. This can then be integrated with a document/content management system. With our purchase of Stellent, Oracle has full Content Management solutions available as well.

These two components put together create a good solution for showing compliance to auditors on what papers (digitized or physical) have been moved by whom and any changes to the associated data.

Upgrading to Siebel Release 8,0

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:37:18 -0800

Anybody out there considering an upgrade to release 8.0 may wish to look at the words of wisdom of one of our customers who has successfully achieved this.

Disney upgrades its CRM

The upgraded successfully used Siebel Support and the documentation and there are a good set of lessons learned. Quite an interesting article.