With SalesForce.com bidden quiet by the rules of the stock market, Oracle offshoot NetSuite and CRM rival SalesJunction have both been pressing claims that their own products are rivals to be reckoned with.

In particular, both companies have been keen to compare their own offerings to SalesForce's in unfavourable terms. NetSuite came in first claiming that it is luring large numbers of customers away from the company.

Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite, is quoted as saying that the reason most CRM implementations fail is not based on whether the application is delivered as a web-based service or delivered as an on-site application. 'Any CRM application that does not include order management is destined to come up short.  It is ironic that the one thing you cannot do with Salesforce.com is sell anything,' he added in comments to the IT press.

Then a second rival, SalesJunction.com, stepped in, alleging that its own online product, 'provides superior ease of use, flexible customisation options and scalability to thousands of users,' and a 'compelling alternative to Salesforce.com'.

Paul Luby, the company's president, told SM365 that its customers told it that competing solutions were too rigid and expensive to meet their needs. 'We designed SalesJunction Professional from the ground up to be flexible, easy to use and affordable,' he added.

NetCommerce launched
In another utility CRM development this week, NetSuite announced that it was adding a new product to its online offerings. The company says that its new product, called NetCommerce, is designed to integrate with NetSuite's front office and back-office solutions to make it easy to deliver sales and service on the web.

Commenting on the new release, Gene Alvarez, vice president of Technology Research Services at META Group told SM365 that to compete effectively, SMEs have to move beyond first generation, website content and web stores. 'Trading partner demands are driving the move to second generation ecommerce - integrated with customer facing and back office real-time business processes,' he added.