Oracle Service vs. Parature (Discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Oracle Service
Score 5.1 out of 10
N/A
Oracle Service is the help desk and customer experience management platform from Oracle. The technology was developed and supported by RightNow Technologies as RightNow CX for cloud-based call center automation, until that company's acquisition by Oracle in 2011 for about $1.5 billion.N/A
Parature (Discontinued)
Score 5.0 out of 10
N/A
Parature was a self-service customer support platform providing a self-service knowledge base to connect with customers across multiple channels. The company was acquired by Microsoft in January 2014 and reached EOL in 2017.N/A
Pricing
Oracle ServiceParature (Discontinued)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Oracle ServiceParature (Discontinued)
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Oracle ServiceParature (Discontinued)
Features
Oracle ServiceParature (Discontinued)
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Oracle Service
7.5
Ratings
7% below category average
Parature (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
Organize and prioritize service tickets7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Expert directory7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation6.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket response8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Oracle Service
7.3
Ratings
7% below category average
Parature (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
External knowledge base6.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Oracle Service
7.2
Ratings
8% below category average
Parature (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
Customer portal7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
IVR7.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration4.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Email support7.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration8.60 Ratings00 Ratings
User Ratings
Oracle ServiceParature (Discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
5.1
(0 ratings)
6.7
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
6.1
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
2.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
7.5
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Oracle ServiceParature (Discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
Oracle Right (Oracle Service Cloud) was an important evolution in the group's ombudsman channel management processes. We brought the Oracle Service Cloud to digitize the processes for capturing and managing the group's ombudsman channel, no longer operating manually (MS Excel).

Oracle Service Cloud (Right Now) brought about an important evolution in the management processes of the group's ombudsman channel, where activities that were performed manually, repetitively and with risk of errors, are now operated by the Right Now platform itself, whether by API, or by automation of the tool.
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Parature earns a "7" on my rating scale because it fits the bill for a ticketing solution. While it is not the most powerful utility I have come across, it is fairly user friendly and gets the job done. There is quite a bit of room for customizing the interface, but it comes with a learning curve. A score of "7" reflects what I would tell anyone who is looking for feedback on this application; it's better than a majority of the market share, but still has room to grow!
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Pros
  • Oracle Service cloud handles incident management extremely well. It can accept requests from multiple channels. That includes email, website, phone, chat, SMS & some social.
  • Oracle Service cloud provides a knowledge base that can be used by customers or by agents. It can move consumers to self service for most issues. It also has good feedback from customers and agents so that the knowledge can continue to be updated to push people to more self service.
  • Oracle has a good consumer portal that can be used as a website or typically is used in conjunction with a main website as a contact center or help center site. This allows the contact center to manage both the knowledge and the request and the interactions with the customers.
  • Oracle Service cloud is built to provide a turn key solution for CRM/Contact center with some minor configuration. But it also has the ability to be highly customized to meet any companies needs. Much of that work can be done via the configuration options already in the system. It also have a full set of SOAP and Rest APIs for integrating to other systems.
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  • Syncs all support emails into cases that can the be prioritized, monitored, and tracked.
  • Provides easy canned responses to common support questions helping save time.
  • Provides live chat.
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Cons
  • This is only an occasional, user problem; when searching for specific records, at times we receive an error that the maximum size has been exceeded and therefore does not yield any results. This is particularly frustrating when trying to search for a specific street address across several years.
  • I found OPA challenging to use.
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  • Implementation- I think they have worked on improving this since we launched
  • Custom requests
  • Perhaps an interface with other business systems
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Likelihood to Renew
I give this rating to RightNow because I believe that it's a strong CRM (I know RightNow doesn't like this term) product with virtually limitless possibilities. I like how flexible RightNow is, allowing businesses to fully customize it for their needs. I also like that it's cloud based and doesn't require additional local installation and management.
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We left Parature for Salesforce Service Cloud. While Parature was functional, as our business matured we needed better support, more stability, and a lot more features. In addition, it integrated with our sales, marketing, and finance department, allowing us to all use a single solution and be able to share information across departments.
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Usability
The learning curve is fairly steep; but for something that has this much capability, it's nearly impossible to make it "easy". The layout and organization are at least reasonably intuitive. The hardest part-- the "weakest link"-- is the portal development (where you can build help centers and other end-user pages.) The capabilities there are significant, but the learning curve for that part is especially steep and it takes a fair amount of expertise to be able to update it.
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It was bulky, cumbersome, and didn't allow us to handle the volume of cases we received on a daily basis. Many of our issues were highly technical in nature and we would often need to work on 2 or 3 at once. The poor design choices prevented this, which was unfortunate.
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Reliability and Availability
We have never had issues with downtime or it not being available. Upgrades and maintenance also happens in weekends or at night.
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They recently had one very extended outage. It was a data center issue - but they were not diversified enough so in the end the system was down for almost 8 hours. There are also periods of time where for no reason the system simply doesn't respond. This small outages are usually short (just a few minutes), and have in fact been occurring less often, so it appears some corrective actions have been taken.
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Performance
We use a lot of tabs and fields on our incident workspace, which should slow the system down, but it's still quite fast, and we continue to optimize whatever is possible.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Technicians seem to be assessed based solely on how quickly they close the issues. I've had to reopen requests multiple times because they didn't actually solve my problem. Also, when the issue has even a moderate amount of complexity, the technicians often instruct me to "open another SR" to handle the other issue. I'm the customer, I shouldn't have to follow their processes, they should handle that for me. But even when I create the new SR, it seems like their right hand isn't talking to their left - they aren't reading back to the previous issue for context. So I get bounced around a lot, and I have to tell them how to do their job
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Nothing ever seemed to get resolved
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In-Person Training
Most of our training was given while doing user acceptance testing, and getting the system approved by the market. When ever we were in doubt, our implementer helped us along. Later on we started exploring by our selves.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Work with a RightNow expert during the implementation. Explain features that would you like to have. Often, somebody who really knows the system can show you what you need to do to achieve the desired results. Where a RightNow support engineer or a consultant might say "the system can't do that," a RightNow application engineer will listen to what you need, and often come up with an alternate path to achieve it
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Alternatives Considered
TCS' customers who also selected Oracle Service Cloud over Salesforce Service Cloud and GE's ServiceMax in the Mfg. vertical in which I work, did so because of the robust ability of Oracle Service Cloud and its APIs to integrate with other value-add solutions for manufacturers such as IoT applications, Big Data Analytics, and Field Service applications.
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Before choosing Parature we reviewed many of the currently available solutions before building our short list of Parature, SugarCRM, Zendesk, Salesforce, and NetSuite. In the end, the licensing models for Salesforce and Netsuite eliminated them from consideration. The SugarCRM solution was our current solution, and didn't appear to be a key area of focus for Sugar (though we continue to use SugarCRM for everything except the Ticketing feature). Zendesk lacked the Download Module feature which is a critical element of our deployment. In the end, it was Parature that addressed all of the needs we identified and did so in a single, hosted solution. It was also one of the least expensive to deploy and maintain.
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Scalability
We have never had any down time, slowness or anything. Any error or instability that has occurrred has so far has been caused by user errors.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • Automation of campaigns across different channels of communication gives us an overview of our efforts and further boost how we engage our customers
  • The email support help us reach a large number of customer within a short period of time simplifying customer support workflow
  • Attracting more leads and converting them to become potential customers
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  • Positive: everything is housed in one place, we are paperless and we are efficient.
  • Negative: the bugs of this product make the above equally as frustrating. Also, some people don't use it correctly and going back and fixing their mistake is time-consuming. The reporting feature are also pretty flawed.
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ScreenShots

Oracle Service Screenshots

Screenshot of A pixel-perfect Customer Portal organizes self-service content in a way that makes sense to your customers.Screenshot of Customers can search, email, chat, and call your business from their mobile devices for immediate resolution.Screenshot of Bring omnichannel interactions together into an intuitive, unified agent desktop.Screenshot of A fully integrated knowledge solution is the backbone of all seamless and consistent service experiences.Screenshot of Tailor customer experiences with contextualized and personalized service using dynamic interviews.Screenshot of Predictive forecasting tools increase field service operational efficiencies to ensure timely job completion.