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Option 10: Building for the future

We believe the U.S. economy is now more likely to experience a U-shaped recession where the rate of decline is rapid and the recovery slower. This period of uncertainty creates an opportunity for companies that have the resources and will to invest in sales and marketing. The leaders during the next major expansion phase will be those that invest during a downturn.

Our discussion with customers shows that companies invest in customer relationship management and marketing services solutions as much for operational efficiency as revenue generation. This is one area where initiatives that effectively cut costs can also build a foundation for future growth.

Automating the direct sales force with better account management, proposal generation, forecasting and territory management tools can increase the number of deals in the pipeline. It will also reduce the amount of time, resources and inaccuracies in the process. If managed intelligently, a strategic CRM program can create a virtuous circle of cost saving, increased customer satisfaction and new revenue potential.

In this environment, selecting the right technology foundation for customer initiatives has never been more important. This is a time to tightly manage risk and limit investments on stand-alone component technology. Against this backdrop, Siebel Systems is the only game in town. They have the breadth of products, services and partnerships to be the strategic choice for nearly every major customer project. We have tracked the CRM market closely for a decade, and each major study has shown Siebel grow incrementally as the strategic choice.

In our experience, there are compelling reasons to select both Siebel’s enterprise and hosted SaaS products. Having experience on both sides of the SaaS versus enterprise software debate, we view this phase in the business cycle as contrarian. Now is the time to purchase enterprise CRM software. Software vendors like Siebel are even more willing to sharpen their pencils to close a deal. As the business climate improves, today’s investments will bear fruit quickly.

Siebel Named Leader in SFA by Forrester

Forrester Research just released the latest installment of their Forrester Wave for Sales Force Management which rates the major vendors in the space as of Q4 S008. Siebel, SAP, Microsoft, and salesforce.com all achieved the vaunted Leader categorization, as did up-and-comer RightNow Technologies. Both Oracle's Siebel (the on-premise Siebel offering) and Oracle CRM OnDemand (the Siebel SaaS offering) were ranked as leaders. Forrester praised Siebel for its functionality and called out its social web capabilities and its support for the indirect channel. In addition to the strong rating for functionality, Siebel (on-premise) rated well in terms market presence. The one area it got significantly dinged in was in regard to Time to Value, where it ranked lowest. Interestingly the CRM OnDemand offering received the highest rating in this area. This Sales Force Management Wave analysis is supported by several other complementary Waves. The one most germane to Extraprise's business is the Enterprise CRM Suites Wave (which include a more full set of CRM functions including support, field service, marketing, etc.). Siebel ranks as a Leader in this area as the vendor having the greatest breadth and depth of functionality. In both Sales Force Management and Enterprise CRM Suites, it's interesting to note that other Oracle CRM offerings (PeopleSoft and eBusiness suite) do not fare as well as the marquee Siebel-based offerings. Over time, Oracle has a strategy to converge the best functionality from each platform into a new "Fusion" offering. Most bets are being placed on that meaning the Fusion offering will look a lot like the Siebel application. In the short to mid-term, Extaprise's Siebel expertise may provide us some opportunities for us to work with customers on developing a strategy to migrate from other offerings to the ultimate Siebel/Fusion Oracle CRM offering. The full Sales Force Management Wave Analysis can be viewed in pdf format here.