Oracle scheduled and conducted their first partner bootcamp for Fusion CRM. There were about 80 participants attended which was packed with sessions by the product mangers explaining the features and functionality of the product and round table discussions and q&a sessions.
Obviously everyone is asking the same question, is it better than sales force dot com or Siebel. There is no simple answer to this question. The complex answer to this question is " YES. The tech stack, foundational components and taking lessons learned from Siebel, peoplesoft CRM, oracle CRM, and building it on top of fusion middleware is different and definitely going to surpass any other CRM products in the market place today however if you do apples to appes comparison on the functionality alone it doesn't stand up to other products in the market today yet"
In order to catch up with functionality and bug fixes Oracle has come up their product road-map and rigorously working on a tight schedule. Customers looking to implement Fusion CRM should understand this better. Find the below write up on patch/release cadence.
Patch and release cadence:
With any new software product Version 1 is always lacks few functionality, UI requires some enhancements and there are some missing required tools to ease the implementation. Because Fusion CRM is built from ground up it is going through the same cycle. In version 1 the first thing to get it right is the tech stack components. Meaning all the metal, nuts and bolts required to build an enterprise software. They have got that right. Now to accelerate the bug fixing and release new functionality they are going to weekly patch releases and quarterly functionality release cycle. It is aspirational given the complexity and I can imagine the customers who are implementing on-premise Having to put a dedicated team and environments to take the patches and releases.
How do you plan for it? Early adaptors of Fusion CRM have to adapt to whatever out of box functionality has to offer and stay away from complex customizations because sooner or later you will get that functionality out of the box. If you are implementing on-premise version then dedicate a separate team (1-2 full time) to address the patch and release cadence and have a plan in place to uptake them as and when it gets released. The reason is if you are calling for support and say you are 2 versions behind you can guess what the tech support answer Will be.
After confusing everyone with their version naming and numbering( RUP, V1.0.1...) they have gone to simple release numbering schemes such as release 1, release 2... And for now each release version increase corresponds to quarterly release. In the next 2 years you will see fusion CRM to be in north of release 10.
