Oracle 'Accelerates' Toward SMBs With New Loyalty Program

Oracle is stepping on the gas with its Accelerate initiative to boost application sales to small and midsize businesses. Later this year, the vendor will add a solution-partner loyalty program to Accelerate, offering high-performing channel partners such incentives as training, promotion funds, and sales and marketing resources.

Oracle also recently announced seven solutions from channel partners based on the Accelerate application modules, representing the first fruits of the Accelerate program unveiled at Oracle OpenWorld last October.

Because most large companies have installed ERP and CRM applications from Oracle, SAP or another vendor, the SMB market holds the most promise for application sales growth. Finding the right formula for tackling that market has proved tricky, although two-thirds of Oracle's application customers are SMBs, defined by Oracle as companies with annual sales of $500 million or less, says Jeff Abbott, vice president of Oracle's global SMB business unit. Small and midsize businesses generally don't have the resources to install and manage enterprise-scale applications like SAP's MySAP ERP, and vendors have struggled to come up with products tailored for SMBs.

Accelerate is Oracle's latest effort, replacing the E-Business Suite Special Edition it had been selling for companies with 50 or fewer users. It's competing with the Business One and All-in-One application sets that SAP markets to small and midsize companies, respectively, and Microsoft's Dynamics lines of ERP and CRM apps.

Under Accelerate, channel partners can pick application modules from Oracle's E-Business Suite, JD Edwards', PeopleSoft's and Siebel's product lines, and bundle them into solutions for SMB customers within some 70 vertical markets. To speed up deployment of those applications, the Accelerate program also offers "Oracle Business Accelerators," including rapid prototyping tools and process-workflow links, also tailored for vertical industries. They allow the Accelerate applications to be installed in days compared to weeks or months for enterprise-class applications, says Tony Kender, senior vice president of Oracle's global SMB business unit that oversees the Accelerate effort.

So far, the Accelerate initiative is getting a thumbs-up from solution providers.

"These have tangible value. They aren't just marketingware," says Hal Hawisher, a principal at Baytree Associates, a Charlotte, N.C.-based solution provider, speaking of the Accelerators. The company builds solutions around the E-Business Suite for small and large companies in a number of verticals, including financial services, health care, utilities, manufacturing and distribution. In February, Baytree unveiled an E-Business Suite-based package targeting professional, management and consulting service companies.

The Accelerator technology will cut application implementation time and costs from 25 percent to 33 percent, predicts Walt Zipperman, CEO of DAZ Systems, a solution provider based in El Segundo, Calif. And the program will help introduce the company's products, including its new E-Business Suite-based apps for the consumer-packaged- goods and nondurable-goods industries, to Oracle's salesforce, Zipperman says, adding, "We think [Accelerate] will generate significant revenue for the company, so we're pretty bullish on it."

Other Accelerate products unveiled in February for the U.S. and Canadian markets include applications for the manufacturing and industrial-component industries from Amazing USA and Syntax.net, software for professional and business-service companies from Business Technology Services, and local government and public-sector applications from Solbourne and Tier 1 Innovation.

Business Technology Services and Solbourne built their products on Oracle's E-Business Suite, while the Amazing USA and Syntax.net products are based on the JD Edwards' EnterpriseOne applications Oracle acquired in 2005 as part of its $10.3 billion PeopleSoft buyout. Tier 1 Innovation's software is based on applications from Siebel Systems, which Oracle acquired last year for nearly $6 billion.

To participate in Accelerate, resellers must demonstrate their ability to deliver solutions to customers in specific industries and geographies, and to provide documented evidence that their products and procedures offer ease of use. Oracle is currently developing performance metrics for solution-provider partners for the loyalty program and defining the appropriate benefits for each level of achievement, Kender says.

The loyalty program is expected to launch sometime in Oracle's next fiscal year, which begins June 1. The Accelerate program already provides channel partners with marketing-campaign assistance, referral fees and inclusion in the Accelerate section of the Oracle PartnerNetwork Solutions Catalog.