Oracle Corp’s application division tells Morgan Stanley & Co analysts that the company wants to get out of the feature battle because they don’t think it’s winnable. The danger is its sales people, while initially focusing on the business value provided by Oracle applications quickly lapsed into feature/function checklists. Rather than getting trapped in a keystroke battle with other vendors about how many keys must be pushed to enter a purchase order, Oracle plans to leverage the convergence of data warehousing, OLAP, and data mining with packaged applications by focusing on a series of five or ten questions targeted at CEOs in vertical industries. It’ll challenge competitors to answer the questions via their applications. Oracle believes that if it can provide this business insight using its vast database skills the CEO won’t care if it takes five or ten keystrokes to enter a purchase order and Oracle can change the game. Oracle chief operating officer Ray Lane told the brokerage the company’s applications business simply hasn’t had a differentiated strategy in the past and he plans to change that.
