Siebel 7 Apps Move Closer To Fruition

Siebel 7 will serve as the product backdrop for Siebel Systems' annual World-wide User Conference here this week.

The long-awaited "Web-icized" CRM applications will be generally available before Thanksgiving, said Richard Gorman, vice president of product marketing for Siebel Systems, San Mateo, Calif. Key customers received code in advance of the conference.

Siebel Chairman Tom Siebel will demo the new software at this week's conference.

Siebel Chairman Tom Siebel is slated to demonstrate the new software at the conference on Monday.

Users want a truly thin client that requires no software other than a Javascript-enabled browser on the desktop, Gorman said.

The interface has been redesigned to let users enter data and schedule events without navigating through many screens, he said. "You click once and type in information. You're not having to click through a lot of menus," Gorman said. The server-based applications run best with Internet Explorer 5.5 and later or Netscape 6.1 and later, he added.

Siebel also is launching an ACE partner initiative to woo smaller integrators, with whom the vendor has had limited success in the past. But even integrators that have been irked by Siebel's tight account control are embracing the new offering.

"I would say Siebel is one of the top three products available, and it doesn't require the customer to change its corporate culture. The learning curve is not as high as with SAP, for example," said Roland Pinto, CEO of Globabilities, an Omaha, Neb.-based integrator.

Partner relationship functionality also has been improved, Gorman said. "In the professional services area, we've greatly enhanced the ability to devise optimal schedules," he said. "You can drill down around revenue and customer satisfaction and also manage [consultants] around skills to make sure they deploy the people with the right skills at the right account in the right town. We've built in scheduling algorithms to expedite this."

Siebel's lead in CRM is under pressure as application kingpins such as Oracle, SAP and PeopleSoft maneuver to enter the space, analysts said. Still, it is unclear what financial impact the release will have for Siebel, since most customers are on maintenance contracts. But Gorman said customers typically add more application modules as they upgrade.

As a category, CRM is under fire of late. Customers are complaining that implementations are costly and fail to meet expectations, say industry watchers. Yet Gorman said all of Siebel's sales and support people have more than 40 percent of their compensation tied to customer satisfaction.

"Customer [satisfaction] is part of our culture," he said. "Within the last seven or eight months, we've tied all the product organizations to this. It was true for salespeople all along, and now it's true for the rest."

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