Salesforce.com Woos UpShot Users

On Friday, Salesforce.com, San Francisco, offered UpShot customers free migration to its hosted system, free training, along with three months of free service. Just two days before, Siebel Systems had announced plans to buy UpShot for $50 million in cash.

Boston-based Salesnet beat Salesforce.com to the punch with its own plans to woo UpShot customers earlier Friday.

Salesforce.com and Salesnet both maintain that UpShot's offerings, by virtue of this acquisition, are dead-ended. Siebel chairman Tom Siebel last week said the UpShot technology would be merged into Siebel OnDemand, a new hosted CRM offering developed with IBM.

Salesforce.com is offering "stranded discontinued Siebel UpShot customers 12 months of Salesforce .... service, at the same price they are currently paying for UpShot. And, we'll throw in the first three months of Salesforce.com for free," according to a posting on its Web site

Salesforce.com Professional Edition costs $65 per user per month. The Enterprise Edition is $125 per user per month.

While hosted CRM providers have struggled to prosper, they have won some key accounts. UpShot, claims 1,000 customers including General Motors Acceptance Corp. (GMAC).

Siebel, the market-leader in enterprise CRM has not replicated its success in smaller companies, and UpShot, along with its previously announced Siebel On Demand offering could attack that problem. ((See story.)

Hosted CRM providers have also fought to become cash positive, but some solution providers say the tide is turning. Salesforce.com, which is privately held, claimed its first profit for the quarter ending April 30, 2003.

They maintain, that Siebel, which tried and failed with its own hosted offering a few years ago, is renewing its attack with Siebel OnDemand.

"The time for the ASP model is ripe, Siebel picks up something like 1,000 customers including [GMAC] ..and with Siebel OnDemand, Siebel now has something no one else offers, both a hosted and a full-blown enterprise model that can synch up," said Fred Reede, president of CRM Solutions, North Canton, Ohio.