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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tony Viola who wrote (853)	3/27/1999 10:34:00 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Respond to of 54805

THIS MONTH IN THE FRONT OFFICE Though it's not yet the end of the month, this will be my end-of-month report. The month ends in the middle of the week when I'm too busy at the day job to post the additional details I include only in the monthly wrap-up. Part 1 - The News E-commerce is coming to the front office. Vantive and Clarify now have fully web-enabled e-commerce front office suites and both suites work with Microsoft's new Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition. Another trend is that no matter how a customer contacts a company, front office software will show the total picture whether customers use voice mail, e-mail, the Web, or any combination of the three. Remedy and Vantive announced integrated products this month that accomplish that. For the over 800 Remedy customers sites using Oracle Applications, Remedy's release of the Strategic Service Suite for Oracle Applications means reduced cost and greater flexibility. Remedy also launched Purchasing@Work, a Web-based electronic purchasing system "that lets users enter, route and track purchase requisitions and orders online." Aberdeen Group says companies using online purchasing can reduce processing costs and processing time more than 70%. No wonder Remedy expects customers experiencing at least 5000 purchase requests per year to see a return on investment in six months. Vantive has partnered with privately held Rubric, one of the leading enterprise marketing software companies, to integrate marketing modules with Vantive Enterprise and Vantive Web. If I remember correctly, Geof Moore is on the board of Rubric. There aren't many guarantees in the front office biz. That's why it's important that Sequent Computer Systems announced a performance guarantee for customers deploying large-scale Siebel 99 call center applications on Sequent's NUMACenter systems. If system benchmarks are not met, Sequent will add up to $5 million worth of hardware and service upgrades to meet pre-determined performance levels. Investors watching pure plays in the front office software biz keep a wary eye on the ERP folks. This month SAP lost its president of SAP America. He became the veep of Siebel's North American operations. SAP also announced that their front office modules are delayed and might not be available until next year. Oracle is still on schedule to deliver their front office modules this year and is already rolling out products that can be used on SAP's R/3 platform. In Oracle's conference call this month, Larry Ellison is reported to have said that the company is already #2 behind Siebel in front office sales and that those sales are growing at a faster rate than Siebel's. You might have seen my comments in the Siebel folder questioning that claim and similarly questionable claims made a few months ago by Thomas Siebel. Take statements made by these two CEOs in their conference calls about each other's company with a grain of salt. It's entertaining if you enjoy watching clashing egos, but that's about it. For the financial progress of my Front Office Gorilla Game, see my next post using the font that makes it possible to align financial details. --Mike Buckley

To: Tony Viola who wrote (853)	3/27/1999 10:40:00 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Respond to of 54805

Part 2 - The Stocks As you can see in the data below, our Front Office Gorilla Game still has a commanding lead over the other indexes, though the lead has shrunk significantly. This time last month we were outperforming the S&P 500 three-to-one since inception. History Quarter Month Gorilla Game 26.40% 15.03% -8.68% S&P 500 15.52% 4.34% 3.59% Russell 2000 -14.92% -6.65% 0.42% That data below doesn't show the game's nearly 10% daily gains and losses in the past week. It's been a very volatile week, to say the least. In fact, the only thing that has been consistent about the game since inception is that it has been extraordinarily volatile. We began playing the game on 5/25/98 with $10,000 (not real money). Commissions are based on $8 per trade. The game began with equal dollar amounts of each stock. The detailed data is shown below: % of Symbol Portfolio In at Now Change CLFY 34.8% $13.25 $23.38 76.45% RMDY 15.9% $17.44 $14.13 -19.01% SEBL 40.8% $23.00 $47.75 107.61% VNTV 8.3% $27.63 $11.69 -57.69% The final numbers: Stocks $12,610.07 Cash $30.27 Total $12,640.34 Disclosure: I own a long position in Siebel Systems and will consider owning positions in other stocks in the portfolio. --Mike Buckley