Oracle continues its acquisition juggernaut with the takeover of Demantra, a provider of demand management, sales and operations planning, and trade promotions management solutions. It is expected that the Demantra product will become Oracle's demand planning solution from now on. Existing Oracle demand management users can upgrade to the solution at no extra cost.
The Demantra suite includes promotion analytics, which on the face of it might seem redundant given that the Siebel customer relationship management application is now part of Oracle's extensive offering of enterprise solutions. Where Siebel is more focused on the overall promotion plan, Demantra is more focused on promotion forecasting and event planning, according to Steve Banker of ARC Advisory Group. There also is a small overlap with the budgeting function in enterprise performance management solutions, but Oracle sees this as more complementary than a competing application and is looking to integrate it with its EPM application.
"This is an acquisition I never would have predicted," Banker says. "But after taking a closer look, it does fill some holes, and it does deepen Oracle's capabilities in demand management. One interesting thing about the Demantra solution is that it is part application and part platform. The platform allows it to plug into companies' sales and operations planning process, which tend to be very different from one company to the next."
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