In a one-two combination of punches, Oracle has purchased customer relationship management software developer TOA to compete with Salesforce.com in providing field service solutions.
In addition to arming itself to compete in the field service sector, Oracle will sever TOA's Salesforce integration and replace it with its own cloud services.
TOA's three software offerings enable customer service agents to predict tight service windows, dispatch field technicians, monitor field work in real time, support field work and track company resources, according to Oracle.
Companies large and small seek to engage customers through a seamless experience during each interaction, said David Vap, group vice president for Oracle product development, before stressing the important of his company's acquistion of the CRM company.
"Field service is a critical aspect of customer service and by integrating TOA with Oracle Service Cloud, Oracle will uniquely offer enterprises the ability to coordinate face-to-face service interactions from the contact center to service scheduling and delivery," said Vap. "Further, by integrating TOA with Oracle's ERP Cloud and ERP Applications, enterprises' field service teams will have better information and can be operated more efficiently and at lower cost."
TOA manages more than 120 million service calls each year in over 20 countries, according to a release from Oracle. A few of TOA's notable clients included Dish Network, Home Depot, Ricoh, Telefonica and Virgin Media.
The combination of TOA's software solutions with Oracle's service cloud will accelerate clients' ability to deliver first-rate customer service, stated Yuval Brisker, CEO of TOA Technologies
"Delivering quality field service during the last mile of issue resolution is critical to achieving the highest levels of customer satisfaction," said Brisker. " TOA's solutions help companies streamline operations, gaining real-time scheduling capability that transforms how service is delivered."
Ray Wang, chairman and founder of Constellation Research, said there has been a battle for delivering field service solutions and TOA's algorithms have helped the company stand out in the industry.
"They are pretty sharp in optimizing when to send a rep, how many calls to schedule," said Wang. "When you used to call the cable company they'd say, 'We'll send a guy between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.' With TOA, it's between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., or 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. They can get it down to the hour instead of wasting your time."
The acquisition of TOA complements a move made by Oracle earlier in July, in which Oracle's Big Data SQL was updated with the ability to query multiple databases in a combined instance.
