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

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (1601)	5/24/1998 12:28:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6974

<OT> Answers to Manu/ProMira merger questions vs. Sebl/Scopus: Hi, A few people asked me via private msg if the Manu meltdown (which was in part due to the ProMira acquisition) portends poorly for the Siebel/Scopus merger. First of all, I'm not an expert in front office apps, I'm just learning. Almost everyone on this thread knows more than me - Shege, Melissa, Steve Farber etc. However I do know a little about the business climate for manu, so I will respond to your questions with what I do know. Manu and Itwo are the only major players in SCM and at this moment address different mkts, Manu in CPG primarily and Itwo in discrete mfg (Dell, etc.). Manu recently acquired ProMira to try to get into the discrete mfg space and compete with Itwo, however I have not seen Manu bidding on any local business that I know of, vs. Itwo which is everywhere. Technically, if Manu tried to integrate ProMira into their product line it would have been a daunting task but they didn't do that. Sebl seems more committed to create scopus functionality within the sebl architecture so technically Sebl faces 40% more of a challenge than Manu did. If Manu had done the acquisition right, however, their task would have been more difficult than sebl but there is nothing to be gained in mfg for doing this really, they did the right thing. So the point is, the technical issues did not cause Manu to collapse. It looks like the real problem arose when Manu started to try to sell the ProMira solution - they did not understand the customer base. The situation there is, if you as a vendor want SCM you have to get all your trading partners to sign up, and that takes time, and their committment. In the end, you want to bring these partners into your SCM "domain". Thats the issue - its an intense selling process, and involves a lot of people, approvals etc. Similar to the early days of JIT mfg where the big players forced the little guys into it. Manu did not understand this process and their projections were off, plus they seem to have put too many resources into bidding on these huge discrete deals (at the expense of their CPG core business) which did not come through this qtr (but which probably will eventually). For Sebl/Scop I just can't see anything like this happening at all. First of all, SFA will probably remain the main thrust for the business, the Scopus stuff won't cause them to lose sight of that. And, I don't think there are any issues with regard to selling Scopus that are diffent than selling Seibel, right? If anything, it seems like SFA is more complex to sell. So despite the fact that Sebl and Scopus are closer in size than Manu/ProMira, there are actually fewer issues for management to deal with. Overall, I'm sure there will be issues with Siebel and Scopus but theres really no chance of a Manu-type 50% meltdown. Hope this helps, Michelle