Oracle Ranks High In Multilingual Capabilities

Oracle received an international feather in its cap from Forrester Research for its business flow focus. The research firm recently scored Oracle at the top of its Multilingual Capabilities list with a score of 4.2. Specifically, Oracle's integrated technology-stack approach was cited as a key differentiator for its multilingual, multinational CRM applications. Oracle received an overall assessment score of 4.0 out of 5.0. A June 2002 report evaluated CRM applications from a number of different vendors on 96 key criteria related to language capabilities. "Oracle offers the richest support for multiple languages in one instance and has an edge in exploiting Unicode functionality of its own Oracle9i Database," said Homs, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research. "If someone calls a company and speaks English to an English-speaking representative, a French representative can call up the information on the same customer and view it in French. This allows you to run your global organization from one database," says a company representative. The Oracle E-Business Suite supports 30 languages, all character sets, unique global business practices, and local statutory and regulatory requirements, all from a single global instance, giving companies real-time information on the state of their businesses. "This uniquely positions Oracle to serve the needs of multinational organizations looking to realize the benefits a global, single instance of CRM can offer, including standardized processes around the world, centralized access to information and a single view of each customer," said John Wookey, Oracle's senior vice-president of application development. The application, however, does not offer any translation capabilities - both the agent and the end-user customer must speak the same language. Oracle also scored high on Forrester's Future Development Strategy area with a score of 3.7. The two rankings fit in line with Oracle's concentration on building solutions around "business flows" and not merely product features and functionality. "Customers are not asking for a CRM solution," Wookey says. "They may have a problem with customer retention, deal closing time, managing multiple channels of distribution, and so on. They need to understand where these issues fit in the business flow."