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To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (6509)	10/24/2002 3:58:30 PM
From: mtnlady	Respond to of 6974

“ From a product perspective I really think its a mgmt issue in applications for oracle. They churn their people too often and rely on too many "class of's" (?) for an application product that needs experience at the mid-levels to get it right.” Agreed. “Not the same as engine where a few really talented teams can pull the whole thing off with some junior people in the lower ranks, in apps you need team leads who know their business... well thats my take on it anyway.” Couldn’t agree more. I’ve worked in a segment of the CRM business for years. Long before SEBL came around. Heck I even predate CLFY and Vantive (scary I know ...) … I’ve designed countless systems for this particular segment of the industry (and I’ve seen innumerable ‘new’ and ‘improved’ technologies come and go). I have yet to see one huge team put together a really great app. You can’t design great systems by committee. You need small, tight teams of people who are experts in their particular ‘niche’s (application visionaries, ‘tech heads’, coders etc…). One person is in charge (usually the application visionary). Working for this group is a team of coders (mid to junior level – seniors are usually part of the ‘core’ team). Surrounding the core team you need the gurus of the other application systems, key customers, supporting management etc... Throwing numbers at the project doesn’t cut it (ORCL). It actually makes the job that much more difficult for the core team. Trying to design the system by committee doesn’t cut it (this is many times the problem in the larger software companies where everybody wants to justify their own existence and there are political turfs to protect). Unreal time deadlines don’t cut it (a big problem for companies trying to play catch-up or do a quick ‘fix’ to satisfy a customer requirement). I could go on and on… Because of these problems many of the best and most knowledgeable people won’t work in a big company environment again unless they can be assured that the core team is given what they need (see above), provided with enough breathing room to get the job done, have realistic time deadlines & financial support and they report to top managment that won't come and go like a revolving door on them. It helps if the managment is either a) knowledgeable in the particular field you are working in or b) willing to listen and resist micro managing if they are not... Now what are the odds of finding such a thing? Lol! Right! Now you know why almost all of the truly ‘great’ inventions come out of small start-ups. Once these small start-ups get swallowed up the product line seems to go into a holding pattern with the parent company adding countless bells and whistles and upgrading technologies but never really making any huge leaps forward.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (6509)	10/24/2002 6:23:26 PM
From: Hardly B. Solipsist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

I think that there was a HUGE management problem in the ORCL CRM group. I knew a guy that worked in QA in ORCL CRM for a while (until he couldn't take it anymore). He'd worked in the RDMBS side and figured that it should be possible to take lessons learned on the RDBMS side and apply them to CRM. What he didn't expect was that there was no process and no management support for one. Is it any wonder that things never got fixed? I don't know enough to know if the problem with ORCL's products was that they were missing lots of functionality, but if the problem was quality (that is, a total lack of it), then I expect that things have changed since the reorg. Can you give a thumbnail sketch of the problems that you see with ORCL's CRM products (and how recently you looked at them)?