CRM Software includes hundreds of business processes.

Press Release Summary:



Siebel v7.5 embeds best practice business processes such as performance management, training, employee self-service, and corporate-wide access to resources, news, and other information. Best practices support sales, marketing, service, and partner and employee relationship management. To provide integration, it supports Web Services, Universal Application Network, SOAP, WSDL, Microsoft .NET, and J2EE-based applications.




Original Press Release:



Siebel Systems Redefines the Standard for CRM by Delivering Hundreds of Business Processes in Siebel 7.5



Industry-Specific Best Practices in Siebel 7.5 Enable Organizations to Deliver Superior Customer Experiences

SAN MATEO, Calif. - September 4, 2002 - Siebel Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SEBL), a leading provider of multichannel eBusiness applications software, today redefines the standard for CRM with the delivery of hundreds of business processes embedded in Siebel 7.5, the latest release of Siebel eBusiness Applications. Featuring industry-specific best practices and new functionality for multichannel sales, marketing, service, and partner and employee relationship management, Siebel 7.5 enables organizations to easily leverage and modify proven business processes to deliver superior customer experiences. With comprehensive support for Web Services and Universal Application Network the industry's first standards-based solution for multiapplication integration,Siebel 7.5 enables the interoperability of Siebel eBusiness Applications with Microsoft .NET and J2EE-based applications. Siebel Systems is the only vendor with the proven domain expertise in CRM to deliver best practices encapsulated in comprehensive business processes.

"The enterprise applications market is undergoing a fundamental shift based on customer requirements, emerging industry standards, and technology innovation. Organizations are embracing business processes and Web Services for interoperability, and Siebel Systems is at the forefront of this trend," said Thomas M. Siebel, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Siebel Systems, Inc. "We have leveraged more than 3,500 customer deployments and nearly 10 years of product development to document hundreds of industry-specific best practices. These best practices are encapsulated in Siebel 7.5 as business processes and are extended across the enterprise through Web Services and Universal Application Network."

Best Practices Deliver Superior Customer Experience
Siebel Systems has documented hundreds of industry-specific best practices for every aspect of CRM and embedded them directly in the functionality of Siebel eBusiness Applications. Business processes are a structured series of documented activities that accomplish a discrete business objective. Best practices are proven methodologies for consistently achieving business objectives. For example, a well-known best practice in call centers is to efficiently and effectively route customer calls to the most qualified agents for first-call resolution. With skills-based routing embedded in the application, organizations can achieve higher customer satisfaction, reduce average call handling times, and improve agent productivity. For the first time, with Siebel 7.5, organizations can take advantage of embedded best practice business processes in sales, marketing, and service to quickly and cost-effectively deliver superior customer experiences. In addition, Siebel 7.5 supports complex multistep business processes that span multiple applications such as service provisioning in communications, formulary management in pharmaceuticals, and trade promotions and funds management in consumer goods.

"The best practice business processes embedded in Siebel 7.5 will help us reach our business objectives and improve our ability to meet our customers' needs across all business and geographical lines," said David Beck, Director, Strategic Operations, Quest Software, Inc. "We are particularly excited by Siebel 7.5's support for forecasting, as we believe it will be crucial to helping our sales team proactively address business and market trends."

Universal Application Network and Web Services Solve the Integration Challenge Recognizing that customer-driven business processes involve data from multiple applications and data sources, Siebel Systems ensures interoperability by supporting Web Services and standards-based integration through Universal Application Network. Taking a standards-based approach to the design and development of cross-application business processes, Universal Application Network leverages the proven integration server technology of leading vendors. Customers can easily integrate data and cross-application business processes from various applications and benefit from reduced integration and deployment costs.

As part of Universal Application Network development, Siebel Systems introduces Application Service Interfaces (ASIs) in Siebel 7.5, which expose Siebel business services and business processes as Web Services and provide the ability to invoke externally defined Web Services for seamless business process execution.

Siebel 7.5 supports standards such as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) and provides the ability to:
o Publish business services and workflow processes as Web Services.
o Generate WSDL documents for business services and business processes, which are exposed as Web Services. External tools can use these WSDL files to develop applications that interact with Siebel Web Services.
o Invoke a Siebel published Web Service via HTTP, MQ, and MSMQ.

New Functionality across All Product Lines Enables the Customer-Driven Enterprise

Siebel 7.5 offers comprehensive breadth and depth of functionality along with usability and performance improvements across all product lines, including multichannel sales, marketing, and service. Key highlights include:
o Siebel Sales Global account visibility and robust incentive compensation
o Siebel Interactive Selling Enhanced customer order management, product catalog and pricing management
o Siebel Marketing Decision broker, budgeting and objectives management, enhanced customer and promotion analytics, enhanced collaborative marketing
o Siebel Field Service Logistics management, contract performance analytics, complex hierarchical assets, and quality/defect management
o Siebel Call Center Real-time service analytics
o Siebel PRM-Partner analytics, partner CRM, collaborative campaign execution, partner Web Services

Siebel 7.5 also introduces significant new functionality within the Siebel Analytics and Siebel Employee Relationship Management (ERM) product lines. Integrated across all Siebel eBusiness Applications, Siebel Analytics 7.5 provides role-based analytic applications that deliver relevant, actionable, just-in-time intelligence to employees, partners, and customers. Intelligently analyzing Siebel and non-Siebel data from historical and real-time sources, including third-party operational systems, Siebel Analytics 7.5 delivers fact-based and personalized insight to thousands of decision-makers inside and outside the organization. New Siebel 7.5 Analytics applications include Siebel Executive Analytics, Siebel Incentive Compensation Analytics, and Siebel Product and Pricing Analytics.

The industry's broadest and most comprehensive suite of packaged ERM applications for executives, managers, and employees, Siebel ERM 7.5 embeds best practice business processes such as performance management, training, employee self-service, and corporate-wide access to resources, news, and other information.

New Siebel ERM 7.5 application modules include:
o Siebel Compensation-Planning Connecting employee performance with overall compensation requirements for the organization
o Siebel Competency Management Enabling more reliable tracking, updating, and searching of skills across the employee base
o Siebel Automated Desktop Support Automatically collects diagnostic information from a user's machine for streamlined IT support
o Siebel Employee Self-Service Providing a wizard-based approach to managing information inside and outside Siebel eBusiness Applications

With Siebel 7.5, all 20 industry-specific applications are shipping simultaneously with rich new functionality, analytics, and best practices to address individual market requirements, including:
o Siebel Financial Services-Integrated broker desktop, reconfigured integration for quotes and claims, pension plan administration, anticipation services, healthcare referral and authorizations
o Siebel Homeland Security-Investigative case management, citizen self-service, first response, outreach, partner management
o Siebel eCommunications and Siebel eMedia-Billing care management, transfer service
o Siebel eEnergy, Siebel eOil & Gas, Siebel eChemicals-Energy price calculator, CIS and SAP IS-U integration
o Siebel eConsumer Goods-Enhanced sales volume planning, enhanced product distribution
o Siebel eAutomotive-Dealer solution, showroom control
o Siebel Life Sciences-Enhanced managed care functionality, clinical document tracking, sales and service handheld support, enhanced account hierarchy
o Siebel High Tech and Industrial Manufacturing-Support for multitiered distribution networks, enhanced product life cycle management
o Siebel eHospitality-Event management

Universal Customer Master Ensures Customer Data Accuracy and Integrity
Siebel 7.5 also introduces the Siebel Universal Customer Master (UCM), which unifies customer information across multiple business units and disparate systems into a comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date customer profile repository. Reflecting best practices for effectively managing customer data, Siebel UCM enables enterprises to maximize cross-selling opportunities and improve the customer experience, while reducing data management costs.

Unrivaled Global Deployment Delivers Cost Savings
Shipping simultaneously in 17 languages, Siebel 7.5 meets the most rigorous demands for large-scale global deployments. With full Unicode support, global organizations can implement Siebel eBusiness Applications in multiple languages and across multiple platforms, character sets, and countries while maintaining a single, unified repository. Companies that deploy Siebel 7.5 and leverage the Unicode support will experience dramatic improvements in the time and costs required to implement and maintain global deployments. "CRM systems of the past typically required separate server instances to support the disparate code bases or scripts necessary for each unique language, which resulted in geographic stovepipes that impeded global CRM implementations," said Steve Bonadio, Senior Program Director, META Group, Inc. "Application vendor support for double-byte character sets and Unicode will enable multinational companies to reduce application management complexity through consolidation of multiple application and database instances, while facilitating their efforts to enable a truly global panoramic view of the customer."

About Siebel Systems
Siebel Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SEBL) is a leading provider of eBusiness applications software, enabling corporations to sell to, market to, and serve customers across multiple channels and lines of business. With more than 3,500 customers worldwide, Siebel Systems provides organizations with a proven set of industry-specific best practices, CRM applications, and business processes, empowering them to consistently deliver superior customer experiences and establish more profitable customer relationships. Siebel Systems' sales and service facilities are located in more than 28 countries.

Media Contact:
Jane Paolucci
Siebel Systems, Inc.
650-477-1334
jpaolucci@siebel.com

Siebel is a trademark of Siebel Systems, Inc. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. All other product and company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned for identification purposes only.

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