Automated Forecasting Improves Pipeline Visibility, Manages Multiple Currency Transactions, and Drives Better Business Return
SAN MATEO, Calif. - March 21, 2005 - Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: SEBL), a leading provider of business applications software, today announced that InFact is saving $33,000 every quarter using Siebel CRM On Demand. Automated forecasting is helping this leading French technology consulting organization to improve pipeline visibility, manage multiple currency transactions, and drive better business return. Oracle Corporation' hosted CRM solution has also enabled InFact to reduce its sales cycle time by 20 percent and increase marketing campaign effectiveness.
"InFact trades in multiple currencies around the world, and it used to take one person up to four days each quarter to pull together all the different currency rates and fluctuation allowances into one consolidated spreadsheet forecast," said Richard Napier, Director of Business Development, InFact Group. "With Siebel CRM On Demand, currency conversion, historical exchange rates, and roll-ups are all done automatically. This automated forecasting is saving InFact $33,000 each quarter in reduced overhead. Timely and accurate forecasting is also transforming InFact into a more agile, proactive consultancy."
The InFact Group (www.infactgroup.com) is a global technology consulting organization based in France, with a presence in many of the world's largest and most prestigious eBusiness and business intelligence deployments. InFact deployed Siebel CRM On Demand in Europe, the United States, and India last year to create a single, comprehensive view of its customers and partners across multiple channels and touchpoints. By introducing a standard sales, marketing, and service methodology worldwide, the company is optimizing sales performance by efficiently tracking and qualifying every sales opportunity. The company can also schedule and record account-related activities; identify top-performing accounts; and conduct rigorous analysis of customer interactions by region, industry, and revenue. In addition, InFact is able to identify new business opportunities within existing accounts, thereby increasing revenue per customer.
Siebel CRM On Demand is instrumental in driving lead capture and opportunity management. InFact is rapidly integrating internal applications and intranet sites used for capturing sales leads-resulting in a faster and more efficient supply of business leads to be qualified and converted into opportunities. Siebel CRM On Demand also provides a single, coherent picture of the development of each opportunity, using standard terminology.
InFact also uses the powerful sales analytics tools within Siebel CRM On Demand to compare average sales cycles, win rates, deal sizes, and other key performance metrics. The company can analyze customers and prospects by industry, region, and even city. This information is invaluable in determining whether InFact has met its targets and where the company needs to focus its recruitment and training resources. Additionally, the solution's analytic tools enable InFact to better manage and monitor its sales pipeline and improve sales forecasting. Pipeline analysis for the current quarter is a key feature of the company's management meetings, and Siebel CRM On Demand is used to display revenue forecasts for the quarter by industry, channel type, and geography.
Siebel CRM On Demand is also maximizing marketing campaign effectiveness. In minutes, InFact can generate a tightly targeted group of customers for a campaign, prepare a compelling offer-either by email or post-and execute the campaign. Once complete, the company is able to track the campaign response and circulate the opportunities among the sales team. Siebel CRM On Demand is also used to manage adequate stocks of collateral ahead of any campaign taking place.
One of the most important aspects of the CRM system is the resilient hosting environment that safeguards and maintains InFact's data within a 24x7 secure and reliable infrastructure. InFact is confident that this bulletproof approach ensures data is always available-whatever the scenario. "An outage, however short, would have a serious impact on our ability to do business. Thankfully, we can rest assured that the hosting abilities and resources will ensure we receive continuous application availability," Napier explained.
He concluded, "As a small, fast-growing organization, we wanted to capitalize on the benefits of CRM, but couldn't afford the investment in an on premise CRM solution. Siebel CRM On Demand provides almost all the functionality of an enterprise CRM solution for minimal advance capital outlay. It means we have the information at our fingertips needed to compete on an equal footing with the multinational systems integration companies. The other advantages of Siebel CRM On Demand include the seamless migration path to Oracle CRM Professional Edition, to Oracle's enterprise applications, and open standard integration to other applications."
InFact is the latest in a growing number of organizations to deploy Siebel CRM On Demand. Following its European launch last year, Siebel CRM On Demand is experiencing significant success in the UK, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, The Netherlands, Nordics, Russia, and The Czech Republic. With Siebel CRM On Demand's support for English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German languages, European companies can now take advantage of Oracle Corporation' proven CRM capabilities provided by a hosted solution that enables companies to sell to, market to, and serve customers in their native languages. Siebel CRM On Demand is the industry's first and only hosted CRM solution designed to work in conjunction with "on premise" Oracle CRM systems. Sharing a common data model with Oracle 7 applications, Siebel CRM On Demand offers an easy migration path to on premise Oracle CRM systems.
Media Contact:
Stacey Burbach
Oracle Corporation
Tel: (480) 377-3725
Email:
stacey.burbach@siebel.com
Statements in this release and the exhibits hereto which are not purely historical facts, including statements about forecasted financial projections or other statements about anticipations, beliefs, expectations, hopes, intentions or strategies for the future, may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are based upon information available to Worldspan, L.P. ("the Company") on the date this report was submitted. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Any forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from the events or results described in the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, risks and uncertainties related to: the Company's revenue being highly dependent on the travel and transportation industries; airlines limiting their participation in travel marketing and distribution services; and other changes or events which impact the travel industry or the Company. More information on potential risks and uncertainties is available in the Company's recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's annual Form 10-K report, Forms 10-Q, Forms 8-K, and Form S-1 Registration Statement.
Except for the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risk or uncertainties. Future operating results of Oracle Corporation may differ from the results discussed or forecasted in the forward-looking statements due to factors that include, but are not limited to, risks associated with customer relations, such as the availability of Oracle Corporation' products and services, customer implementation of products and services, relationships with customers, third-party vendors and systems integrators, concentration of revenues in a relatively small number of customers, existence of errors or defects in products, ability to successfully manage growth, significant current and expected additional competition and the need to continue to expand product distribution and services offerings. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of Oracle Corporation are included in Oracle Corporation' Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available at www.sec.gov. Oracle Corporation assumes no obligation to update the information in this press release.
Oracle is a trademark of Oracle Corporation and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. All other product and firm names mentioned are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned for identification purposes only.