Speaking at Oracle Open World in San Francisco, Joe Felix, director of global consumer & commercial IT at GSK, hailed the success of implementing Oracle's Siebel CRM application across 80 countries, but was also keen to put forward a number of complaints to George Jacob, group VP of CRM applications at Oracle, who was also in attendance.

"These projects are not sprints, they are marathons. I started this project six years ago and have now implemented a sales-force automation system that processes 250,000 calls a day, has over 25,000 users, 18,000 of which are remote, and has a Siebel Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) data warehouse that processes a billion transactions a day," said Felix.

He said that GSK has reduced its support cost functions by 23% and increased its sales outside of the US by 38% - where it targeted markets such as Vietnam and Malaysia.

Felix described his relationship with Oracle as 'good', but also said that they 'fight a lot'. He went on to present a 'wish list' to Jacob and said that Oracle should make moves to address these complaints.

"The number one on my wish-list is open UI and mobility. Although we do support iPad, the number one complaint that I get back is the lack of usability and simplification," said Felix.