Oracle Business Intelligence consists of four applications that analyze customer data and the processes set up to interact with customers. Marketing Intelligence analyzes the success of marketing campaigns; Sales Intelligence determines how successful representatives and territories are; Interaction Center Intelligence analyzes data for peak call-center times; and Customer Intelligence, previously introduced, analyzes customer data for profitability and other characteristics.

Staff Leasing Inc., which administers human-resources, payroll, and benefits functions for businesses, is using Interaction Center Intelligence to provide "full visibility" of its clients. It tells who callers are, what they're calling about, and how long customer representatives take to help them. "If we have a representative who takes eight minutes to help the customer and one who takes five minutes, we want to find out what the five-minute rep is doing," says Lisa Harris, senior VP and CIO of the Bradenton, Fla., company.

Analysts say that analysis is critical to customer-relationship management efforts. "Organizations that don't embrace analytical CRM are going to fail in their CRM projects," says Steve Bonadio, an analyst at Meta Group. But, he adds, traditional CRM vendors have been slow to embrace analytical CRM. Bonadio says Oracle's plans for analytics are ambitious and backed by the company's strengths in databases and data warehouses, which may give it an edge over rivals such as Clarify Inc. and Siebel Systems Inc.

Oracle Business Intelligence is the final component of Oracle 11i, which executives say will be delivered May 18. The rollout had slipped several months to fit in new CRM functions.

Oracle last week also introduced Oracle Internet Procurement 11i, an upgrade to its procurement application. The updated version has a new interface design and features improved product search and checkout functions. Oracle Internet Procurement 11i also includes support for Extensible Markup Language catalogs so businesses can load existing supplier catalogs into the procurement system. The package, which ties into Oracle's business-to-business exchange service, is available as part of 11i or as a separate application.