Forrester Wave Q2’17: Oracle and SFDC leading

Forrester has recently published their “Wave” for Customer Service Solutions for Enterprise Organisations, and it is not surprising to see Oracle and Salesforce leading the pack, followed by Verint, Pegasystems, SAP and Microsoft as strong performers. When it comes to the leaders, here are some interesting things that Forrester points out…

Salesforce

The report says that “Salesforce leads with a broad – but not always deep – feature set and vision“. As expected and well known, the product has very strong capabilities. According to Forrester it has “fair incident management capabilities” and allows for “agent utilisation and workload” reporting, even though there is “no native telephony” as well as “full workforce management and quality monitoring” capabilities.

According to Forrester, Salesforce also “offers a breadth – but not depth – of omni-channel capabilities“. It has “basic omni-channel routing” which can only be extended via partnerships. The knowledge management capabilities are “solid and extended via forums provided via Community Cloud“. And reporting capabilities are “augmented by analytics, data discovery, and prescriptive advice scenarios provided via the Analytics Cloud and Einstein Data Discovery“.

Finally, Forrester says that Salesforce offers “industry-specific clouds for financial services, healthcare, and government” and implementations are done by their consulting services and “certified system integrator network“, which Salesforce seems to treat as “an extension of company resources“, developing also a “developer network“.

From a customer perspective, Salesforce’s “references were positive about their ability to execute, yet complaints about the product’s expense continue“. According to Forrester, Salesforce has c. 5,000 customers using this solution.

Oracle

Forrester states that Oracle “excels at knowledge-infused omni-channel service“, as it is aiming to deliver “knowledge-driven service experiences across channels, touch-points, and devices“, following the company’s vision to “enable organisations to deploy any combination of channels dynamically, regardless of what new channel combinations may arise in the future“.

The reports states that Oracle “offers voice natively and via partners” and it also provides reporting capability around “forecast agent workloads and monitor agent performance“. It delivers “knowledge-infused omni-channel interactions across a broad and deep mix of channels” offering “excellent email, chat, visual engagement, feedback, and outbound communications capabilities” as well as “fair social management” that could be extended via Oracle Social Cloud platform.

Unlike its competition, Oracle “is a horizontal product” and it’s most seen in “industries such as retail, consumer packaged goods, high tech, manufacturing, telecommunications, financial services, the public sector, and higher education“. Offering “deep consulting services” and “a growing developer ecosystem“.

From a customer perspective, Oracle’s “customer references are happy with the channel capabilities and solid performance of the product” but there has been some concerns “over account management and customer service practices“. According to Forrester, Oracle has c. 3,000 customers using this solution.