Oracle Releases Integrated Small Business Suite with Hosting

Rawlson King, theWHIR.com

December 18, 2001 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Oracle recently released a powerful and fully integrated online small business suite that is designed to handle all SME business processes. The Oracle Small Business Suite (oraclesmallbusiness.com) includes accounting and finance, sales and customer support, employee management and even provides Web hosting services. The suite replaces Oracle's "NetLedger" service and is completely accessible through a Web browser.

According to a recent in-house survey conducted by Oracle, its Small Business Suite customers can save an average of more than $17,000 US a year, with potential return-on-investment (ROI) of over 1,700 per cent. Typically the solution pays for itself in less than one month.

These results are possible because all the applications that a small business requires - accounting, payroll, Web store, online bill payment, time and expense reporting, and customer relationship management - are all included for a only a monthly fee of $99 US.

Experts manage the software for the enterprise with Oracle's industry leading secure technology, so that the business can have more time to focus upon its own areas of expertise.

For many Oracle customers, this online business suite is certainly the future of business management software. It's packed with functions and features to control most aspects of online and offline businesses. It is brilliantly designed and support is impeccable. Features are continually being added and the development team has quickly implements customer suggestions. Since it is Internet-based, customers don't have to do daily backups (since Oracle backups mission-critical data twice per day), and employees can work when away from the office and have less network administration duties.

Customers especially appreciate that the suite's components cover the range of business applications required to run core business processes. These products are all tightly integrated and include accounting, Web site and Web store services, sales force automation, online bill payment features, payroll and employee management.

Oracle Small Business Suite's Accounting component is by far the most feature-rich online accounting solution available. It includes everything an SME needs to run its business including general ledger, check writing, bank reconciliation, budgeting, accounts receivable, estimates, sales orders, invoicing, statements, inventory, job/project tracking, expense reporting, accounts payable, purchase requests, purchase orders, time and billing, and customizable data-entry screens and forms. Designed from the ground up specifically for the Web, Oracle Small Business Suite Accounting gives a small business more power, flexibility, and security than was ever possible before, all in a seamlessly integrated system.

Oracle Small Business Suite's Web site component allows SMEs to quickly set up and operate a Web site advertising the enterprise and/or goods and services based on the information in the Small Business Suite. The enterprise can easily customize the look and feel, change the layout and terminology, and pick a color scheme that matches the personality of the business.

Oracle Small Business Suite's Web store functionality lets businesses create a Web store in just minutes. It allows SMEs to quickly and easily extend the reach of their businesses to anyone that's shopping on the Internet. Customers will find it easy to browse the Web store and locate the items they are looking for. Featured items can even appear on the store's front page, and the integrated shopping cart makes the purchasing and checkout process very easy.

Oracle Small Business Suite's customer support management lets a business track, route and manage customer support requests. It's message center tracks and assigns all incoming requests for support and creates a new case record for each request. Cases can be assigned to individual reps based on rules that the business sets up, and if needed, cases can be easily escalated to another rep or supervisor. The suite's customer support management can even publish a case generation form on the Web site that will automatically take customer support requests.

With Oracle Small Business Suite, SMEs also have the ability to set up and manage sales territories and automatically prioritize and assign leads within those territories. Companies can even publish a lead generation form on their Web site that will automatically capture prospect information and route it to the appropriate sales rep in the company.

The suite also includes an online bill payment component that eliminates redundant processes, increases employee productivity, and improves the efficiency of managing finances. With Oracle Small Business Suite Online Bill Payment, companies will never need to order stamps, print checks or go to the post office again. The component streamlines the entire bill paying process.

Finally, the suite allows SMEs to manage both payroll and employee oversight. Payroll includes everything a small business needs to quickly and easily process payroll for all its employees. It calculates earnings, withholdings and deductions, and generates and prints paychecks automatically. At year-end it will even print out appropriate tax forms. Further, all relevant tax code is embedded into the system, so that SMEs need not worry about updating tax tables. Oracle Small Business Suite also provides a unique "Employee Center" that allows employees to log in to enter time, enter and track expense reports and enter purchase requests. Employees can also manage events and meetings with Oracle's built-in calendar and track and prioritize tasks that they have to complete. Best of all, they can access the system anytime, anywhere using only a Web browser.

With all of these features, it is safe to deem Oracle's Small Business Suite as one of the best ASPs suites for the SME sector. The suite is available in both an American and Canadian version.