Siebel CRM OnDemand Continues to Gain Worldwide Momentum

"We have delivered the industry's only complete pre-built hosted solution built on Siebel's proven technology platform," said Bruce Cleveland, Senior Vice President and General Manager, OnDemand and SMB at Siebel Systems. "While our solution provides full customization capabilities, our approach is unique because we deliver 85 percent of the customizations and embedded best practices that we know customers require, out-of-the-box, with Siebel CRM OnDemand. In contrast, other generic hosted vendors provide very basic offerings that force each customer to undertake time-consuming and expensive customizations. Siebel's commitment to hosted CRM and to our customers' success is underscored by our business momentum and recent industry analyst reports. We will continue deepening this commitment, and delivering best-in-class pre-built CRM solutions for our customers."

Strong European Presence Just One Year After European Launch

In just one year since Siebel Systems launched European language versions of Siebel CRM OnDemand at Siebel User Week in Cannes, France in April, 2004, the company has built a strong customer base in Europe with its hosted CRM solution. In the past quarter, Siebel CRM OnDemand has been selected by an impressive number of new customers across Europe, representing companies of all sizes and industries, including:

• Allied Worldwide (UK), a worldwide IT co-sourcing company focused on delivering flexible and innovative solutions in an increasingly demanding global environment, to deliver high performance business solutions against ever decreasing time scales;
• Area (Finland), one of the largest travel agencies in Finland, which provides leisure and corporate customers with a broad range of travel services, employs 300 staff members, and operates a network of 20 offices;
• Maskina AS (Norway), an industry leader in the provision of IP telephony, enterprise mobile services, and platforms for advanced mobile communication services;
• Relational Tools (Spain), which serves acquirers, issuers and retailers in the development and operation of sophisticated bank and cash card systems;
• SLIB (France), a software company that specializes in securities and stock exchange activities.

Located in Madrid, Relational Tools selected Siebel CRM OnDemand because of its robust feature-set that allows the company to focus on the execution of sales, marketing and services. "The Siebel Analytics were vital to giving us a 360-degree vision of our customer, and for linking marketing, sales and services with best practices," said Miguel Lozano, Managing Partner, Business Development, Relational Tools. "Being a software company ourselves, it was just as important that we were able to deploy rapidly with little customization and almost no upfront costs."

Key to the momentum of Siebel's hosted CRM solution has been the company's rapid pace of innovation, which has enabled the delivery of major capabilities at a five-to-ten times faster rate than other hosted vendors. Since its launch, Siebel CRM OnDemand has released seven upgrades that include the industry's first and only real-time and historic analytic capabilities; a unique Sales Process Coach for replicating sales success; the first and only pre-built vertical editions for Financial Services, High Technology, Life Sciences and Automotive; and the first built-in contact center solution available as an extension to Siebel CRM OnDemand.

What Industry Experts Are Saying About Hosted CRM

For the second year in a row, Siebel CRM OnDemand was recognized as a leader in the rapidly growing hosted CRM market, according to a March 2005 Forrester Wave reportⁱ.

Several other important industry analyst reports from Yankee, Gartner and Beagle Research were published reviewing Siebel CRM OnDemand's hosted strategy and product offerings.

Beagle Research -
"Evaluating the Options for Vertical Hosted CRM", Denis Pombriant, Beagle Research, January 10, 2005

Forrester Research -
"The Forrester Wave: Hosted Sales Force Automation, Q1 2005, Hands-On Evaluation of Hosted Sales Force Automation Vendors across 160 Criteria" by Liz Herbert with Erin Kinikin, Jessica Harrington, April 1, 2005

Gartner -
"Siebel Closes Function Gap for OnDemand CRM", Joe Galvin, Vice President, Research Director, Gartner Inc, FirstTake from January 13, 2005

Yankee Group -
"With Release 6, Siebel CRM OnDemand Vies for Number One", Yankee Group DecisionNote Product Review, March 18, 2005 by Sheryl Kingstone, Customer-Centric Strategies Program Manager.