Number nine…number nine…number nine…

As part of Oracle’s much-ballyhooed “Applications Unlimited” program, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Customer Relationship Management 9 was publicly released yesterday, though the firm unveiled the product in early June.

The release promises enhancements specifically for the financial services and communications industries. Naturally, PeopleSoft 9 also comes with the hopes of increasing the use of the big guys’ own Theory of Everything, Oracle Fusion Middleware. Together with PeopleTools 8.48, a third Oracle product, PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM 9 and Middleware can form an independent standards-based platform to coordinate disparate technology and applications.

Aside from the enhancements promised, PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM 9 has as a touted advantage in the move to IP services and 3G data networks; this theoretically gives communications service providers flexibility and decision-making speed. PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM 9 is centered in communications-specific care and ordering capabilities.

In the financial services market, enhancements to PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM include financial account creation, lead / referral management, and web services for remote portlets. Enhancement to integrating and reporting features in PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM 9 include expanded web services, i.e. 19 new web service-enabled transactions and over 70 service operations, and Oracle XML Publisher, integrated specifically with PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM 9.

The updated “Learning Management” module includes an improved talent management tool to assist in training and certifying employees. The updated tool can be used to preemptively alert managers when employees need to be certified in a given process or be trained by a set deadline. PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM 9 customers, by dint of the new product can leverage certain Oracle software, including Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Application Server 10g. Among the first to line up for implementation of PeopleSoft CRM 9.0 is Chicago’s DePaul University.

DePaul University CRM craft team leader Audrey Bledsoe claims that the package is the “best of both worlds” in that Oracle Fusion Middleware components act as a sort of bonus freebie and provide a next generation of software for the Uni while the application enhancements for extant Oracle product are necessary. DePaul has been running on a CRM 8.9 environment for some time. Oracle, says company PR, is the world’s largest enterprise software company.