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

To: Shege Dambanza who wrote (1610)	5/21/1998 1:38:00 PM
From: Kevin Rose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

Hi Shege: "If Siebel continues at Cisco they deserve credit for retaining the account." Since when should companies get credit for simply fulfilling their obligations and giving their customers their moneys worth? Cisco has been a customer of ours for years on the support side. They are a tough but generally fair customer. They hold themselves and their vendors to very high standards. There have been times when they have put pressure on us, and we have come through with improvements that address their concerns. I don't want to focus specifically on Cisco; maybe SEBL will make them happy again; but instead comment on SEBL installations in general. When I floated the news that there were a notable number of 'failed SEBL implementations', I got blasted by some SEBL devotees for spreading rumors. In fact, there has since been confirmation from other sources on SI and elsewhere of these failures. Someone else cited 40% failure rate?! It can't be that high, but even 10% would be incredible. My question is: this is 100% satisfied 100% of the time? Jeez, Tom, I didn't know that this was part of the magic formula. On the support side, to have failed implementation would be an unmitigated disaster. No company can really claim that 100% of their installed base is referencable; it just ain't the real world. But at least CLFY (and VNTV, I believe) can claim 100% successful implementations (barring mergers, etc in the customer base). SEBL can't even claim that, but claims 100% satisfaction. "Yeah, we bought the stuff, never implemented it. But Tom showed us a great time, took us all up in his plane, so yeah, I'm satisfied". Maybe it should be "100% of the customers who happen to get our product implemented and then happen to be referencable are satisfied". My point (and I do have one) is that any company that claims 100% satisfied customers, especially in software, loses credibility. Some customers are tough, and may lapse into and out of referencability. Some customers will never be happy; it is not in their nature. So, if SEBL maintains this position, you have to ask yourself the question: what else are they fibbing about? As investors, you need to be aware and not get swooned. My other point is that if SEBL thinks they can pull the same wool on the support or integrated product side, they are in for a big surprise. It seems to me that if an SFA installation fails, the customer does not rush to replace it (I gather this because if there were a number of failed SEBL implementations that ended up in other camps, there would be a lot of crowing from those replacement vendors). I don't know why; maybe they somehow felt that they were not quite ready for an SFA solution yet. I'm not saying that SFA is not critical to some customers, or that it doesn't have a payback, just that these points are not yet fully accepted by all of the customer base. But you CANNOT not have a support system in place (someone help me with my grammer here). You NEED to have support, even if just with a simple call tracking system. I don't know of any company of any significant size that does not have some sort of support automation software, even if home grown. So my real 2nd point is that the things that made SEBL successful in SFA will not work in Support. So all of you who think that SEBL is now the gorilla with SCOP may be in for a big letdown in the future. Product integration aside, it is a whole new ballgame here. If SEBL has failed support implementations, us (I work for CLFY) or VNTV will scoop them up and throw them in their face at EVERY opportunity. It won't work all the time, but there are plenty of buyers on the support side whose career futures may be on the line, who will shy away from ANY such risk. Sorry, Shege, for the length of the reply. Melissa advised me that you like to see lengthy and detailed responses to your posts. Good luck to all investors.