Oracle Corporation Launches "CRM Index" to Help Drive Customer Best Practices for SMBs

Oracle Launches Online Benchmarking and Advisory Tool as Datamonitor Study Reveals European SMBs are Struggling to Manage and Measure Customer Relationships

SAN MATEO, Calif.-October 11, 2005 - 2005-Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: SEBL), a leading provider of customer-facing solutions, today announced the launch of the " CRM Index" for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The CRM Index is based on data from independent research conducted by Datamonitor, the findings of which are published today as a report entitled "Going for Growth: Are European SMBs Ready to Meet Customer Demands?"

The CRM Index is both a "living" benchmark, which will provide ongoing performance metrics for this market, and an online tool that enables SMBs to understand and measure how well they attract, manage, and service their customers. It allows any organization to benchmark its customer relationship management, initially against 1,000 other companies.

SMBs can measure how their organization performs overall or specifically how its sales, marketing, or service functions rate against the industry standard. Once the results are assessed, the CRM Index provides a personalized summary and advice guide, as well as a library of best practices for SMBs to improve their CRM effectiveness.

Datamonitor Research Findings

The results of the survey underscore that while small and medium-sized businesses are focused on growth, they are failing to maximize revenue from existing and prospective customers.

Almost half of SMBs (46 percent) cite growing revenues and maximizing margins as their top business objective. In alignment with this goal, more than half of European SMBs are investing in some kind of customer management tool to help them retain and attract customers to fuel this growth. These include basic Call Management to track customers, as well as simple databases. However, in many cases SMBs are not using these tools to implement customer service principles across all the relevant departments within their organization.

In particular, the study revealed that 80 percent of requests for an email response to a phone inquiry are never sent, and 57 percent of SMBs have no time targets for responding to customer inquiries. When it comes to human interaction, 31 percent of European SMBs do not have a dedicated customer point of contact.

European SMBs are also ineffective at measuring the impact of their sales and marketing investments. Only 41 percent of the organizations surveyed are tracking how much they are spending on marketing versus the impact of these expenditures on revenue and customer growth. Fifty percent of European respondents are also not tracking the performance of sales individuals, meaning they are unable to identify stronger versus weaker performers.

CRM Index-Benchmarking and Reference Site for SMBs

The CRM Index enables businesses to identify how they are performing against those companies Datamonitor surveyed and then helps them address the areas where they fall short.

The benchmarking tool questions SMBs about their sales, marketing, and service capabilities in areas such as how they track contact with customers, how effective their marketing campaigns are, and the extent to which they cross- and up-sell. They are then indexed against the 1,000 businesses already surveyed and are provided with free, personalized advice on the steps they can take to improve customer interactions, based on Oracle Corporation' best practices. Complimentary reference materials include books, white papers, and case studies documenting how other organizations manage their customer portfolio.

The number of companies against which the CRM Index benchmarks SMBs will grow over time as the findings of each questionnaire are anonymously added to the overall study. This will provide a "living" benchmark, tracking ongoing performance metrics for the SMB market.

"It only takes one unanswered phone call or email for a prospective customer to go elsewhere, and when you're focused on growth, each and every customer can be crucial," said Neil Morgan, Vice President of European Marketing, Oracle Corporation. "The CRM Index is designed to make it easy for SMBs to understand why customer service is central to business success and give practical guidance on how to achieve it. Above all, SMBs truly value the free advice based on our many years of experience in helping them to get the best out of their investment."

"While SMBs see the value of investing in systems and technology to help them with customer management, based on these research findings it is clear they are not leveraging them properly," added Evan Kirchheimer, Analysis Director, CRM at Datamonitor. "For example, it makes no sense to invest in direct mail and telemarketing campaigns if companies do not measure what return they are getting. The CRM Index that Oracle has created from this Datamonitor study is an in-depth, honest appraisal of how well SMBs' sales and marketing functions are performing. If any business is serious about offering the best levels of customer service, which ultimately helps increase revenue, we encourage them to find out more about their strengths and weaknesses and act on them."

The CRM Index can be found at www.crm-index.com.

About Siebel CRM On Demand

Siebel CRM On Demand is a hosted CRM offering delivered over the Web and accessible from an Internet browser at a fixed price per user per month. Customers can deploy Siebel CRM On Demand quickly, easily, and affordably without any up-front IT investments. Hosted by IBM, Siebel CRM On Demand delivers complete sales, marketing, and service functionality; built-in customer analytics; virtual call center technology; embedded best practices; and world-class hosting services and support. Siebel CRM On Demand is now available for purchase. For more information, visit www.crmondemand.com.

Media Contact:
Shabana Khan
Oracle Corporation
Tel: (650) 477-1180
Email: shabana.khan@siebel.com

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