Go-Go (CRM) Gadgets!

Continuing further in the direction shown at OpenWorld last month, Oracle has released a number of "gadgets" that allow customers of their CRM products to access information from a multitude of locations.  Currently, five gadgets are available:

• Top accounts
• Prospects
• Top deals
• My quota / My forecast

• Custom Search

Check out a few of the gadgets here:

According to Mark Woollen (Oracle’s VP of Social CRM Applications) and Dipock Das (their Sr. Director of CRM Innovation), the gadgets will work with multiple versions of Siebel and OnDemand, and are built on a common code set with REST-style integration.  The gadgets must be installed locally on the user’s machine, and are only available for desktop-deployment (Windows, Mac, Linux) at the current time.

About 20 of Oracle’s customers (e.g. Nokia and Motorola) are beta-testing these gadgets.

While another good step forward, what I’m chomping at the bit to see is connection and convergence with other innovative things that Oracle has been doing like the Body Shop proof-of-concept that was shown at OpenWorld.  Continuance down that path will continue to evolve CRM into something that is much more VRM-like.  That’s where the great stuff lies.