Siebel unveils SMB go-to-market strategy
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InfoWorld - After a year of pilots and trials, Siebel Systems jumped with both feet into the SMB market Tuesday, announcing a new approach to offer Siebel Professional CRM applications to SMBs (small and midsize businesses) -- companies with revenues up to about &#36;500 million.
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Cisco Systems is accelerating its push into the SMB market with the launch this week of entry-level switching modules, an aggregation switch and a Web-based management tool that helps smaller customers gain easier access to high-level features.
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Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) is beginning to implement a new vendor-relationship strategy emphasizing deeper alliances with fewer vendors. On Monday, it plans to name Siebel Systems Inc. as the first company with which it is forging a closer partnership.
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Siebel SystemsÂ has quietly introduced a version of its CRM (customer relationship management) sales software tailored for midmarket companies.ADVERTISEMENTSBC Datacomm White PaperFind out how Crate & Barrel expects to save $180,000 by moving to VoIP, compared to a traditional PBX.
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Business software maker Siebel  Systems Inc. SEBL.O on Wednesday reported a quarterly profit,  after a year-earlier net loss, driven by a healthy rise in  license revenue.
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The $115 million acquisition will help Siebel add E-billing and customer self-service capabilities to its product line. By Tony Kontzer.
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A new small-business community Web site and security software are part of IBM's push to make its mainframes more attractive to the SMB crowd.
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CRM customers will be listening this week when Mike Lawrie takes the stage at the Siebel Systems Inc.&#39;s user conference in Los Angeles for his first public appearance as CEO of the customer-relationship-management software pioneer.
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Business software company Siebel  Systems Inc. SEBL.O on Wednesday said it expects  fourth-quarter sales and profit to beat analysts' estimates,  boosted by higher-than-expected licensing revenue.
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Business software maker Siebel Systems Inc. (SEBL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Monday said third-quarter revenue would beat Wall Street estimates, driven by a rebound in licensing
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Siebel (Nasdaq: SEBL) topped expectations in its  third-quarter earnings results, registering a profit, higher sales and an increase in software-license revenue from the previous quarter.
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New solutions lead the way to market leaders.
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With the aim to improve company performance and better meet customers&#39; needs, IBM on Thursday said it was realigning its Systems and Technology group around types of clients.Instead of product types, the newly aligned division will focus and develop products based on the needs of customers in different segments, said Tim Breuer, an IBM spokesman.The restructured division will target four segments: large enterprises; small-and-medium businesses; verticals; and microelectronics, which includes customers buying IBM&#39;s chips.The objective is to help customers and improve sales of IBM&#39;s products, Breuer said. The realignment enables the division to better determine and integrate hardware, software and services for customers, like meeting data center and virtualization needs in large enterprises, Breuer said. That should help IBM increase its business across the different segments, he said.The newly aligned division will work with other divisions to better configure products for customers in different segments, Breuer said.The restructuring comes at a time when the Systems and Technology division is struggling. In the third quarter of 2007, revenues for the division decreased 10 percent year-over-year to US$4.9 billion, including the divestiture of the Printing System Division in June 2007.IBM is delivering on its promise to focus on customer-oriented solutions that it announced last year, said Joe Clabby, president of Clabby Analytics.The SMB market is especially booming, and the restructuring should help IBM cope with heavy product demand, Clabby said. IBM has struggled a bit chasing the SMB market, but the restructuring coupled with some other recent improvements such as better marketing should help, he said.With the restructuring, IBM is finally putting bat to ball, though it remains to be seen how it will play out in the long run, Clabby said.
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Siebel Systems (Nasdaq: SEBL) has named EDS as the charter partner in Siebels' new business process outsourcing (BPO) global strategic-alliance program. The agreement expands the relationship between EDS and Siebel to provide a set of high-value managed products and service offerings targeted at the BPO and customer relationship management (CRM) marketplaces.
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(InfoWorld) - Oracle is positioning itself to try and attract more SMBs as well as customers that have specific industry requirements and those with particular governance or compliance needs. The highly fragmented SMB market presents opportunities for large and small applications vendors to increase revenue if they can attract customers to adopt their ERP and CRM software. Both Oracle and its main rival, SAP, regularly come out with new initiatives designed to win more SMB hearts and minds. Oracle already believes it has done a lot of work to make it easier for SMBs to install its applications, according to President Charles Phillips. "Our next investment will be around distribution," he said Wednesday atÂ Oracle's launch of new versions of its E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel applications. Within the next few weeks, Oracle executives will begin a "world tour for SMBs," stopping in 20 cities and looking to sign up additional partners, Phillips added. Industry-specific applications is "a wide-open area," Phillips said, where many customers have previously used customized software they built themselves. On the industries side, Oracle has established four key business units to meet the needs of retail, communications, financial services, and utilities customers. "It's a new concept for Oracle," Phillips said. Each unit has its own general manager and is responsible for its own profits and losses. Establishing the business units was vital to retaining the key management executives with industry-specific expertiseÂ Oracle gained throughÂ the acquisitions of companies, he added. These include retail software vendor Retek, communications software firm Portal, and most recently, utilities applications provider SPL WorldGroupÂ in November, as well as the 82 percent stake Oracle holds in Indian financial software vendor i-flex Solutions. "It was something of a lessons learned story," John Wookey, senior vice president of applications at Oracle, said in an interview Wednesday. He referred back to the company's experience in 1997 when it acquired Treasury Services, a profitability and risk analysis software provider. When Oracle completed that deal, it moved the Treasury developer team over to Oracle's development operation and mapped all the other Treasury staff including sales and marketing over to the equivalent organizations within Oracle. Over time, while Oracle was able to retain most of the Treasury developers, very few of the skilled sales organization who were educated on the Treasury software remained with the company. "When we did the Retek acquisition, we didnât want to lose that expertise, so we created the retail unit and, most recently, the utilities unit for SPL World," Wookey said. Oracle may look to set up additional industry business units, he added. The vendor already has a public sector group that is separately organized from the general applications sales operations. Another business unit Oracle has recently put in place is a GRC (governance, risk and compliance) organization, Wookey said, which was formed after the vendor acquired enterprise content management vendor Stellent in December. Along with content management, Stellent also provides compliance and records management software and expertise to help customers manage enterprise risk across their entire organizations. The GRC unit will be home to that part of Stellent as well as internal controls software that's featured in E-Business Suite and in PeopleSoft, respectively, Wookey said. In May, Oracle's arch-rivalÂ SAP announced its plans to establish a GRC business unit after acquiring compliance software vendor Virsa Systems. Â
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Siebel Systems Inc. and Electronic Data Systems Corp. this week will announced a partnership to help companies avoid many of the costs and complexities of managing customer relationship management systems in enterprises.
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After 10 years of focusing on product development and delivery, CEO Michael Lawrie says Siebel had to recognize that technology is only one part of the CRM equation.