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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (5960)	9/3/1999 11:35:00 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Front Office Software, Version 2.0 -- CRM When the first book went to press, customer service automation and sales force automation were in the bowling alley. The second book declares that both are in the "early throes of a tornado" though mobile SFA is still in the bowling alley. Wow! That clears up a lot for me. I've written often that I haven't seen evidence of a clear-cut tornado in the space. It's reassuring to see that Moore agrees. Prior to reading the new book, I've publicly wondered why Moore wrote that all of Silicon Valley had declared Siebel the gorilla. Now it's clear that he doesn't agree with all those execs. He writes, "In summary, round one of the integrated SFA/customer service gorilla game is over, and the leader is Siebel Systems. Going forward, however, Siebel must fight a three-front war." He goes on in detail about his opinion that Vantive and Clarify are still not entirely out of the running for gorilladom (though I doubt that Vantive's most recent problems and the firing of the founding CEO had occured before the text went to the editor.) That helps validate my own reasons for leaving them in my front office game in recently reduced positions, now that it is less likely though not impossible that they will catch up with Siebel. He mentions the encroachment from above by the ERP players and encroachment from below by the mid-tier competitors. He also mentions that because all competitors are changing their software to meet the customers' needs, execution is still critically important and that Siebel is not yet impervious. --Mike Buckley