Oracle OnDemand CRM review and thoughts
It's not often I do a product review. In fact, this really isn't a product review.
But I was meeting with a client this week who is looking to replace his Oracle OnDemand CRM installation with something "more suitable" (Read: Actually works). As he gave me a demo, I was absolutely speechless at how bad the application is.
From feature set, to user interface, to lack of responsiveness from professional services, to cost; It is all around lousy.
The customer lamented that promises were made years ago and still aren't fulfilled. This part of the application doesn't work right so we don't use it (and sure enough, it didn't work). That part of the application won't load (simple dashboard reports hadn't loaded after seven minutes), and users had a hard time getting around in the application because it's just not intuitive. In fact, in many cases I felt the navigation and UI was actually counter-intuitive.
In an age of CRM where SalesForce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM have created applications which are very friendly and feature-rich, on a platform that can be configured and extended and integrated by even the densest of developers, here is Oracle, in the words of Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, "fumbling around and f-ing it up."
I had seen the application when it was first launched, and knew at that time it was awful. But it's what I'd expected from a company trying to get into the Cloud CRM space quickly. The CEO mandates it, the developers get something out there that sucks, and then cooler heads prevail and over time it gets better.
But innovation in CRM has completely left Oracle OnDemand in the dust, leaving Oracle's customers in a system that looks and feels like it's circa 2002.
But I was meeting with a client this week who is looking to replace his Oracle OnDemand CRM installation with something "more suitable" (Read: Actually works). As he gave me a demo, I was absolutely speechless at how bad the application is.
From feature set, to user interface, to lack of responsiveness from professional services, to cost; It is all around lousy.
The customer lamented that promises were made years ago and still aren't fulfilled. This part of the application doesn't work right so we don't use it (and sure enough, it didn't work). That part of the application won't load (simple dashboard reports hadn't loaded after seven minutes), and users had a hard time getting around in the application because it's just not intuitive. In fact, in many cases I felt the navigation and UI was actually counter-intuitive.
In an age of CRM where SalesForce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM have created applications which are very friendly and feature-rich, on a platform that can be configured and extended and integrated by even the densest of developers, here is Oracle, in the words of Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, "fumbling around and f-ing it up."
I had seen the application when it was first launched, and knew at that time it was awful. But it's what I'd expected from a company trying to get into the Cloud CRM space quickly. The CEO mandates it, the developers get something out there that sucks, and then cooler heads prevail and over time it gets better.
But innovation in CRM has completely left Oracle OnDemand in the dust, leaving Oracle's customers in a system that looks and feels like it's circa 2002.