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It's a partnership that seems so natural, you have to wonder why it didn't happen sooner. WebEx, the first name in videoconferencing and real-time online communication for the enterprise, is joining with Oracle, a big player in customer relationship management (CRM), to offer collaborative tools that should make the workday easier for sales teams.

WebEx isn't new to providing support for sales. The company already launched WebEx Sales Center, which allows teams to communicate easily with both internal and external members, bring subject matter experts into meetings, and create portal sites for sales initiatives. This new partnership with Oracle brings in the power of Oracle's Seibel CRM On Demand and adds powerful reporting tools that work with WebEx Sales Center meetings.

The collaborative tools let users combine the abilities of both applications. Users can schedule WebEx meetings from within Seibel CRM On Demand when using the Sales Force Automation Module. The module contains three sections -- accounts, opportunities, and contacts -- and all three integrate with WebEx. Users can leverage the data they're already stored in Seibel CRM On Demand to use in scheduling meetings.

When viewing a contact in Seibel CRM On Demand, users can view all past and future WebEx meetings held with that client. After a WebEx meeting, the program automatically generates a report which is accessible through Seibel CRM On Demand. That report gives meeting statistics such as who attended the meeting, and when each participant arrived and left. Users can also create an additional report with a meeting summary.

Managers will appreciate the automatic report generation, detailing the meetings that were held and showing which led to sales. For portal sites created with WebEx, the combined tools let users see who visited the sites and which documents they viewed.

When WebEx Connect, the meeting company's mashup tool that will allow business applications to communicate with each other, launches early in 2008, Oracle Seibel CRM On Demand collaboration will be a part of it, as will Sugar CRM. For now, before WebEx Connect launches, WebEx users need to rely on a browser interface.

WebEx integrates with Oracle Seibel CRM On Demand, not on premises CRM. Users need to use release 14 of Oracle. The cost of using the collaborative tools is the same as using the tools separately: WebEx starts at $75 per seat per month, with unlimited use of the service for a maximum of 15 people in the meeting space; Oracle Seibel CRM On Demand starts at $70 per seat per month. There's no additional cost to bridge the two products.

To integrate the two services, customers need to follow a supplied customization guide which lists the necessary steps, such as configuring the Seibel CRM On Demand interface with the necessary fields. Administrators will also need to add custom tabs and links to the Seibel CRM On Demand interface, essentially building hooks that will allow the two programs to talk to each other. Companies also have the option of paying WebEx a one-time fee to perform the installation. The products are available from WebEx sales agents.

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