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Technology Stocks : Siebel Systems (SEBL) - strong buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Trader Dave who wrote (3092)	10/21/1999 6:42:00 PM
From: Big Sky	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6974

From a recent Information Week Article, a SEBL customer...Ford Motor I believe: "Training is so imperative," Veros says. "You can have the best product in the world, but if you can't transition people on the front line to the product, then what do you have?" This is truly where most CRM / SFA projects break down.... Lack of User Acceptance. It's amazed me that Siebel can continue this rate of growth when the people that have to use the software to get their jobs done hate using it. BTW, This isn't unique to SEBL....VNTV and Onyx are just as tough (tougher) to use for "non-technical" sales people. I've used all threee, and I'd consider myself a "technical" sales guy. As for my own productivity, I've found nothing that that can beat ACT!, which can be had for less than $200. I've yet to meet a sales person that uses these enterprise SFA systems that feel it helps them to sell more. They only use them when they are threatened with their jobs. The benefits of enterprise SFA accrue mostly to management, who can roll up forecasts with a push of a button. But GIGO applies here. If the salespeople enter garbage data, then the forecasts can't be trusted. PSFT ran into this problem when they rolled out SEBL. (There's an interesting question....wonder how long it will take PSFT to replace their SEBL implementation with Vantive's SFA system....I'll bet two years) Can't argue with SEBL's execution though. Just wish I didn't have first hand experience using it, it clouded my judgement regarding SEBL as an investment. I've thought SEBL was due to crash since 1997, boy was I wrong.