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Using CRM strategy consulting to prepare for Oracle Fusion

Using CRM strategy consulting to prepare for Oracle Fusion

By  William Band, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research 

SearchCRM.com

What's your take on using consultants for a CRM upgrade? How should we determine if we need one? When we move to Fusion, I wonder if we'll need outside help to get us through the process.
Due to the many recent acquisitions by Oracle, their product line is complex. Many Oracle's customers now find themselves with a mixed portfolio of applications including Enterprise Business Suite (EBS) products and legacy products from the acquired companies The move to Oracle Fusion Applications will a big change for many. The underlying architectures for the non-EBS product lines will be most challenging to integrate into Fusion. Each product line has a different phase-in schedule for the supporting middleware for Fusion. And, Oracle will, at the insistence of its customers, also be supporting product upgrade paths for existing product lines of the acquired companies. Each of these product upgrades also has its own schedule. This complexity means that use of outside CRM strategy consulting will likely be required to carefully map your business needs against the Fusion Applications availability schedule in order to chart the right path for your company.