Oracle Joins the SaaS Bandwagon With Social CRM

Oracle is going social with a raft of new software offerings that leverage the software-as-a-service business model along with social networking.The new "Social CRM" software services, which pits Oracle against Salesforce.com, will be delivered via a monthly subscription to both internal sales teams and salespeople who sign up independently via the Web. According to Mark Woollen, VP of CRM development at Oracle, the intent of the offering is to share information via a social networking platform, versus a "top-down hierarchal model." Social CRM includes the ability to create tags and add ratings and commentary to contributions.

Social CRM's first service, called Oracle Sales Prospector, aims to help salespeople identify potential customers using internal and external data sources, as well as historical data. The service will be available by the end of June. Down the road, Oracle plans to offer a service for sharing information on sales and marketing campaigns, and another for creating libraries of sales-related content for sharing.InformationWeek