How Oracle Fusion CRM can win against Salesforce.com?

Many of us including myself who are in enterprise CRM space clearly see the market shift that's currently happening with enterprise CRM software. During 1998-2005 Siebel CRM came out as a leader in enterprise CRM spanning across many industry verticals and covering wide variety of functionality from lead to quote and quote to order and covering many of traditional channels through which customers interact. All this changed couple of years ago when social, mobile and cloud became mainstream. After Siebel acquisition, Oracle embarked on a 6 year journey to build "Fusion Applications" as an answer to next generation technologies. It is definitely the right approach, right tools, right people and right timing. However even after unveiling Fusion applications GA release back in Oct 2011 (6 months before) do you think it has gained momentum among current and new customers?

On Feb 23rd, In Q4 earnings estimates conference call for salesforce.com, CEO Marc Benioff quoted "

In all, we signed more than 100 7-figure transactions and 9 8-figure transactions in the quarter. And as I've been foreshadowing, I'm thrilled to announce that since closing the fourth quarter, we've already topped ourselves by signing our first ever 9-figure transaction in the opening days of Q1. Well that's alarming for Oracle… Because of salesforce.com's clear strategy with cloud, Social and mobile they started expanding into the large enterprise world. CIO's today are pressured to expand their legacy CRM to include social, extend the CRM applications to mobile to satisfy their sales and marketing groups and reduce their On-premise foot print to save money. And they need to do this in 2-3 months and not 2-3 years. So where did they go? Guess? That is what is reflected in salesforce.com Q4 earnings.

I believe the race is not over yet and Oracle Fusion CRM has a long runway if we take new approach and adopt to some of the ideas we have seen it in the marketplace. Here are some of them

1. Make it available: During Open World Larry Ellison unveiled the Oracle public cloud with Fusion applications including Fusion CRM. Now what happens when you register to get trial access? Nothing..! Do the same with salesforce.com you will get an immediate response with a link to check it out..! To be successful you need to open it up to everyone who can get their hands to

2. It’s all about the Apps: Either it is mobile or enterprise the Apps game is heating up. You don't stop by just saying "Fusion CRM" is built on open standards. Help partners, developers, ISV (Independent Software Vendor) and your customers to build & Share the applications. This is the fastest way to deploy new applications rather than developing from scratch. There is a reason why force.com App exchange is having around 135,000 Apps to be consumed

3. Cannibalize your current product with a new product, if you don't your competitor will: There are several thousand Siebel installations at customers and they all are part of "Applications unlimited" as long as they choose to keep it. This may sound right from a revenue stream perspective but it doesn’t mean that they will keep running the same application for next 5-6 years. It is in every CIO's priority list to connect with their customers through social media. That means a clear message is "Fusion CRM is the way to go…the sooner the better"

In summary, Oracle needs to sharpen its message and act fast to save customers who are jumping ship and use this opportunity to make Fusion CRM the next enterprise CRM leader.

You got any suggestions for Oracle? Keep adding them in the comments section