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

To: Hoatzin who wrote (6372)	9/25/2002 4:50:05 AM
From: muckraker71	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6974

LONG post, but (I believe) my fair opinion... I am a fmr Siebel employee (professional services and product marketing for 3.5 yrs, left two years ago) and now an independent Siebel implementation consultant. Siebel probably oversells the application, but clients also bear responsibility for failed implementations. They need to understand these deployments are enterprise in nature and require a much higher commitment from the business than a departmental (point) solution. Customers need to understand that CRM (or any other software package for that matter) is NOT a silver bullet, and CANNOT fix operational processes that are fundamentally flawed. If a business unit's basic processes are flawed (whether by design or default), all the software will do is automate a flawed process. I've seen many customers do this, then blame the software for not fixing their problems. I've seen too many examples where Siebel oversold the application (offering the Kool-Aid), and the customer buys the application (drinking the Kool-Aid) WITHOUT EVER HAVING A CLEAR, COMPELLING, AND SPECIFIC PLAN FOR WHAT TO IMPLEMENT, HOW TO IMPLEMENT, AND WHY TO IMPLEMENT MODULES THEY'VE PURCHASED, AND IN WHAT ORDER, ALONG WITH A CLEAR UNDERSTADING THAT THE IMPLEMENTATION ORDER HAS AN IMPACT ON THE BUSINESS. I've also been on projects (such as my current project) where the customer understands that part of enterprise software implementation means a deep commitment on the part of the business (in partnership with the IT project team) to analyzing the businesses current processes, and making changes where it makes sense. Also, this customer performed a long project planning exercise, and properly scoped the effort. As a result, the implementation team is on target to deliver exactly the functionality promised to the business on-time, and on-budget (we're actually ahead of budget). This is an 18-month, multimillion dollar deployment with several real-time integration touch points to both AS/400 and OS/390 systems, plus document generation and storage via two additional applications. And the customer will achieve an 18-month ROI. Bottom line is, CRM is not a magic bullet, but it does have value, and can produce a significant ROI around 12-18 months. But customers need to not drink the Kool-Aid from the vendors (ALL vendors, not just Siebel). Instead, they need to clearly match business needs with software capabilities, and engage in a proper scoping effort in order to properly set expectations throughout the organization. Projects should probably be managed internally, because internal managers typically have better relationships with the business, and a better understanding of the business's needs. Business owners (business sponsors) need to stay engaged and constantly ask themselves whether processes can be improved vs. simply reproducing existing processes (and applications) on a new platform. In the end, all vendors (including Siebel) need to not oversell their products (chance of this happening: < 0%) and customers need to really not look at CRM (and other enterprise software) as a magic bullet, but a tool that has a specific use within the context of business strategies and processes that have to be revisited and perhaps revised as appropriate (neccesity of this happening: 100%).

To: Hoatzin who wrote (6372)	9/25/2002 1:09:13 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

I work (in IT) for a company that is a SEBL customer, I have seen the costs, delays and limited delivered results first hand, and have no reason to think this experience is not the norm. I have no position of any kind in SEBL stock. Funny how this kind of thing is coming up again in this recession. We went through this in the early days of packaged app software. The great implementations of application software are great, and in some cases can literally put your competition out of business (Dell being the best example of this). Unfortunately standardization across business processes is a painful endeavor and I have never, never, not even once had someone from a user community state that they were completely satisfied with an ERP or CRM implementation. This is just my personal experience, I mostly do ERP but have exposure to CRM. To get the glowing reviews you have to go up to senior management where benefits are more obvious. I recently visited a startup company (I am in SV) - the team there had previously done the infrastructure at redback networks. "It was awful, our erp (baan) didn't work and we were late getting sebl in, and didn't interface between the 2... we couldn't upsell to customers we had no idea what they had bought before or inquired about, no way to plan for their future needs etc". For this new company, both ERP and CRM, and an interface between the 2 systems was a priority before they launch. L