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

To: ynot who wrote (6480)	10/23/2002 12:45:11 PM
From: mtnlady	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

"ORCL et al... gain a little traction connecting process flow" First off I wouldn’t get too enamored with technology. Technology comes and goes. The key is the functionality of the product(s) in general. SEBL can always ‘upgrade’ to the newest technology. Understanding the functionality that the customers need and gracefully incorporating that into the product is the difficult part. Secondly you are oversimplifying CRM. Merely connecting point 'a' with point 'b' doesn’t cut it. Although many over the years has seen CRM as just that … of course that’s probably why their products and eventually their companies failed. Many of the processes and customer requirements that make up CRM are quite complex. Expertise in these areas is not easy to come by nor can you gain it by talking to just a few customers. Customer requirements are too diverse. You need to have worked with hundreds if not thousands of customers to find the commonality between them. This kind of experience doesn’t come overnight. Competition? I think PSFT is the only other company I would be paying attention to at this point in time. ORCL has been trying sense the early 90's to develop aspects of the customer service side of CRM and has yet to succeed. What has changed that will enable them to suceed now? Throw more money at the problem? Nope - they've already done that. Throw more manpower at the problem? They've done that too. The other drawback to SAP and ORCL is that (at least last time I checked!) their products were hardly stand alone products and required customers to own many of their other modules as well. So basically they only can sell to their own existing customer base (I'm not sure if PSFT product is this way as well - anyone?). SEBL on the other hand can sell to anyone. Their market is not limited. No - I think SEBL's #1 problem is the economy. #2 may be the aging of the CRM product life cycle (main street using G&K terms). On the other hand there are still truckloads of niche markets left for the CRM package. Both in terms of customizing the existing app for new market segments as well as adding products to the existing suite. Or at least upgrading some of their weaker offerings so that customers are enticed to leave their existing systems in these areas. Perception and economy will hurt SEBL's stock price yes. But I'm not too concerned that the CRM market is going away or about SEBL's competition. PSFT is the only other company that interests me. MSFT does as well but not because they may become a player in the CRM arena. I probably won't invest in ORCL either when the stock market bottoms out. I definitely won't invest in SAP.