SDA: What are the existing CRM products Siebel is offering?
TC: Siebel's flexible solutions fit any size organisation – from hosted CRM that starts at S/month to integrated, on-premise solutions for the larger companies. There are also a range of solutions customised for vertical sectors including financial services, insurance, telecommunications, media and energy, public sector, high technology, automotive, etc.
Siebel’s CRM offerings broadly cover the following categories:
- Business Intelligence
- Sales Force Automation
- Marketing Automation
- Call Centre and Service
- Customer Order Management
- Self-service and eBilling
- Customer Data Integration
SDA: Can you tell us the market share of Siebel’s products in Asia Pacific?
TC: According to market research firm IDC, Siebel Systems captured 10.7 percent of the worldwide CRM applications software market in 2004, effectively the lion’s share of the CRM global market. Our closest competitor captured a 6.8 percent market share.
In APAC, Siebel had 29 percent share of the APAC CRM market in 2003, according to Aberdeen Group. However, we do not have specific data on Siebel’s Indonesian market share.
SDA: Which industries are currently implementing Siebel products? Do you see any emerging sectors adopting Siebel CRM solutions in the near future? If so, what are they?
TC: Siebel currently offers 23 industry-specific applications and more than 100 industry-specific solution sets. These pre-built solutions contain best practices and business processes to address the unique business needs and challenges of any industry.
Siebel solutions address the needs of companies dealing in industries such as financial services, insurance, telecommunications, media and energy, public sector, high technology, automotive, among many others.
SDA: Where is the CRM market heading towards? And, how do you see the next CRM technology?
TC: We see CRM becoming more interconnected with BI or Business Intelligence. However, BI has become a mission-critical need, it has continued to face several challenges that have impacted adoption. For example:
· Earlier generations of BI were mainly sold as tools (not solutions), and user organisations needed to do some customisation to derive value. Organisations actually require packaged solutions with built-in workflows, so that they can literally use BI out of the box
· The inherent design of BI tools also meant that BI remained the elite domain of IT professionals and business analysts. To drive maximum value, it needs to be accessible and usable for the frontline staff i.e. the masses
· While some companies introduced BI solutions, they were loosely cobbled together and only addressed specific components such as reporting and ad-hoc query
· Moreover, most BI technology enabled companies to analyse historical data. What businesses really need is real-time actionable insight
· To drive greater value from existing BI implementations, organisations also need scalable BI solutions that can extend beyond departmental offerings to an enterprise-level solution
All these new demands require significant functional and architectural changes to the traditional BI tools. Siebel Business Analytics is the next-generation enterprise BI solution that addresses these gaps in the market.
According to analyst estimates, the worldwide market for packaged and custom-built customer analytic applications is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15 percent from US.6 billion in 2001 to more than US.7 billion in 2006.
SDA: Who do you see as your primary competitor in the CRM market?
TC: Siebel is the firm leader in the CRM space. As such, our biggest competition is not the enterprise software vendors, but rather companies that are opting to build their own CRM technology.
SDA: In June, you launched the Release 8 of Siebel CRM OnDemand. Can you explain
what is hosted CRM?
TC: Siebel CRM OnDemand, which is Siebel’s hosted CRM offering, is a high-availability internet utility that enables customers to start with a small CRM project, with practically zero start-up time, deploy rapidly, and grow the system as needs change over time. Companies can start from as low as US per user per month for a complete hosted solution. This cost includes added services such as training.
In addition, Siebel CRM OnDemand is the only truly “smart” hosted CRM solution in the marketplace. Besides sales, service and marketing capabilities, Siebel CRM OnDemand provides powerful analytics for deep insight into operations.
Companies will benefit from Siebel’s domain expertise derived from 10 years and US billion invested in CRM. Siebel is the only vendor that can offer CRM best practices from 4,000 customer deployments and 2.2 million production users – more end-users than all other CRM vendors combined.
Hosting provided by Siebel and IBM also means that customers will receive 24x7 reliability and world-class service and support.
Siebel Systems is the first in the market to address the growing need for a hybrid model that provides companies with a choice of on-premise and hosted CRM solutions.
CRM OnDemand addresses issues of scalability and integration with third-party applications by not having a user cap as well as having pre-built integration to Siebel’s flagship enterprise CRM applications. This offers companies an upgrade path without the typical challenges such as cost and integration.
We have observed that even large enterprises have mid market needs. In such a case, they may also choose to complement their on-premise CRM system by deploying hosted CRM in small field offices or smaller foreign subsidiaries.
The hybrid model helps address the challenge of disparate sources of information to offer companies the agility to receive information on-demand to respond to their markets. Currently in the industry, companies are forced to choose one or the other, with no migration path.
Siebel Systems is offering a hybrid model that allows companies the flexibility to start with a hosted CRM solution and later migrate to an on-premise solution, or run both concurrently.
SDA: Tell us what you believe is the greatest challenge and opportunity for the CRM world today?
TC: It is important to note that CRM is not a technology proposition. It is a business strategy that is enabled by technology. Irrespective of industry or company size, organisations have been wrestling with how to provide enhanced value to customers while increasing their lifetime value. Increasingly over the past decade, companies of all sizes have begun applying information technology to manage customer relationships more effectively.
The key to creating business value with CRM is remembering that business strategy and technology strategy are inextricably linked. When implemented effectively, and understanding how best to make use of this technology, a CRM strategy can assist an organisation to achieve the greatest success in driving greater customer satisfaction, and ultimately, shareholder value.
SDA: In your opinion, what is the main challenge facing organisation during CRM implementation?
TC: Technical integration can be a challenge to the IT personnel during the course of a CRM implementation.
Synchronising core business databases with that of the Call Centre or other parts of the organisation can be tedious but proper training will help address this issue. Also as with every new software implementation, care should be taken that all information incorporated in the beginning is accurate to ensure minimal problems in the future.
SDA: How does Siebel plan to stay ahead in the competitive CRM market? What challenges and opportunities do this present for Siebel in the future?
TC: CRM is a viable, growing market and Siebel Systems is the market-leading player.
IDC very recently recognised Siebel Systems as the global market share leader on a revenue basis in the CRM applications market as did the July 2005 Forrester Wave Report by William Band.
Siebel has over 11 years of experience, more than 3 million live users at more than 4,000 of the world’s largest and most respected organisations, and some of the world’s largest CRM deployments, each spanning tens of thousands of users. We intend to retain this lead by continuing to help our customers achieve outstanding business results by helping them build their business around their customers.
|
