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Siebel CRM OnDemand Provides Enterprise-Class Power for Companies Large and Small; Customer Wins, Rapid Product Development Cycle and Increased Industry Recognition Underscore CRM Leader's Hosted Software Momentum

Posted on: Monday, 17 October 2005, 09:00 CDT

Siebel Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SEBL), a leading provider of customer-facing solutions, today highlighted the unprecedented growth and innovation of Siebel CRM OnDemand. As disclosed in the company's preliminary third quarter earnings announcement and investor conference call, total contract value for the third quarter of 2005 for Siebel CRM OnDemand is expected to be approximately $11M, an increase of 49 percent year-over-year. These strong results have been driven by customer wins around the world among large enterprise organizations and SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) alike and by Siebel's more than 100 solution and technology partners. Siebel CRM OnDemand has also continued to be recognized by leading industry analysts and recently won two prestigious awards. In addition, Siebel's hosted software solutions and deployment capabilities are a critical enabler of its new Customer Adaptive Solutions Applications Strategy and Architecture, announced separately today. Siebel Customer Adaptive Solutions enable organizations to better understand and adapt to the needs of their customers in response to rapidly changing business requirements (see separate press release for additional information).

"We are delivering a complete solution, not just a toolkit, in a simple-to-use, fast-to-deploy hosted application," said Keith Raffel, Group Vice President, Siebel CRM OnDemand Products. "Our customers want the kind of enterprise-class solution that Siebel is known for, with pre-built, advanced analytics features and a fully integrated hosted contact center."

Growing Worldwide Customer Demand

Siebel's hosted solutions continue to gain increased usage among companies of all sizes worldwide. New customers turning to Siebel's hosted CRM solution to drive sales, marketing and services success include:

-- Pulte Homes, the largest U.S. homebuilder by revenue with operations in 54 markets and 28 states, selected Siebel CRM OnDemand and Contact OnDemand to simplify its business and the critical interactions for thousands of sales professionals whose primary focus is to deliver an exceptional homebuying experience to customers. Siebel Systems' strategic vision, customer service, and proven expertise combined to make Pulte Homes' choice a low-risk decision.

-- Kingway CAPS, based in Exeter, NH, is a leader in the newly emerging pick-by-display market. CAPS -- Computer Assisted Picking System -- is the company's automated order selection system that doubles the productivity of order picking in warehouses while virtually eliminating pick errors. With more than 100 CAPS installations globally, the company selected Siebel CRM OnDemand to help it provide more accurate sales forecasts, quicker lead qualification, and timely customer support.

-- Lesite.tv, a division of France 5, the French national knowledge channel, consolidates educational content for teachers and students and distributes it via its Web site -- www.lesite.tv. The company chose Siebel CRM OnDemand to help introduce a new education initiative aimed at increasing lead transformation, improving customer satisfaction, enhancing pipeline management and visibility, and accelerating deal closure.

Rapid Pace of Product Innovation

Key to the momentum of Siebel's hosted CRM solutions has been the company's rapid pace of innovation, which has enabled the delivery of major capabilities at a five-to-ten times faster rate than other hosted vendors. Since its launch, Siebel CRM OnDemand has released nine upgrades, including:

-- the industry's first and only real-time and historic analytic capabilities

-- a unique Sales Process Coach for replicating sales success

-- the first and only pre-built vertical editions (Financial Services, High Technology, Life Sciences, and Automotive)

-- marketing segmentation capabilities

-- out-of-the-box support for both Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes

-- the first hosted contact center solution available as a built-in option to Siebel CRM OnDemand

"Small and medium-sized businesses turn to Siebel CRM OnDemand because it was built based on the company's 11-plus years of CRM experience," said Rob Reid, Group Vice President, SMB, Siebel Systems. "With Siebel CRM OnDemand, companies of all sizes can take advantage of advanced CRM functionality via a delivery model that is easy to use and cost-effective."

Strong Global Partner Presence

In a little over one year since European language versions of Siebel CRM OnDemand were made available, Siebel has measured strong global momentum in the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market. Driven by the launch of its SMB initiative in December 2004, Siebel is continuously strengthening its channel management and marketing team to respond to growing demand and has added more than 100 channel and technology alliance partners worldwide, including 36 channel partners in Europe, 12 in North America, and eight in Latin America.

Positive Endorsements and Awards From Industry Experts

The latest positive analyst report is Nucleus Research's ROI Scorecard (for the On-Demand CRM Market). Siebel CRM OnDemand received a higher overall customer satisfaction rating than Salesforce.com for its hosted CRM solution, garnering a 4.4 out of 5.0 in five key areas that factor into overall customer ROI. Siebel bested Salesforce.com in Vendor, User Adoption/Satisfaction, and Business Impact, reflecting the importance of business dealings with Siebel Systems and value-added product capabilities such as analytics, data warehousing, hosted contact center, sales forecasting, business processes, and industry vertical editions.

The On-Demand CRM Market report can be viewed at the Siebel CRM OnDemand Web site, www.crmondemand.com.

In addition, Siebel CRM OnDemand received the coveted award for Best Execution of a Midmarket IT Solution by attendees at this year's Midsize Enterprise Summit. Produced by Vision Events(R), a Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT and ITB) company, Midsize Enterprise Summit is solely focused on the requirements of midsize businesses and attracts CIOs and senior IT executives from midsize companies across a wide range of industries. CRM Magazine also selected Siebel Systems as a Market Leader in the Midmarket category of the 2005 Market Leader Awards.

About Siebel CRM OnDemand

Siebel CRM OnDemand is a hosted CRM offering delivered over the Web and accessible from an Internet browser at a fixed price per user per month. Customers can deploy Siebel CRM OnDemand quickly, easily, and affordably without any up-front IT investments. Hosted by IBM, Siebel CRM OnDemand delivers complete sales, marketing, and service functionality; built-in customer analytics; virtual call center technology; embedded best practices; and world-class hosting services and support. Siebel CRM OnDemand is now available for purchase. For more information, visit www.crmondemand.com

About Siebel Systems

Siebel Systems is a leading provider of software solutions and services that drive value and loyalty in client-customer relationships, providing best-in-class capabilities in on-premise and hosted customer relationship management (CRM), business analytics, and customer data integration. Siebel's new Customer Adaptive Solutions enable organizations to model their customer-centric business processes in order to drive the most effective customer interactions, gain increased insight over time, and continually realign those processes for systemic and consistent improvement. With more than $2 billion in R&D investments, 11-plus years of customer software experience, an extensive global ecosystem of alliance partners, and more than 4,000 customers and 3.7 million live users, Siebel is the proven choice in helping organizations of all types and sizes achieve customer-driven business results. For more information, visit www.siebel.com.

For more information on Siebel Systems solutions and services, please visit our Web site: CRM -- http://www.siebel.com/crm; OnDemand Solutions -- http://www.crmondemand.com; Industry CRM -- http://www.siebel.com/industry-crm; Call Center & Service -- http://www.siebel.com/call-center; Sales Force Automation -- http://www.siebel.com/sales-force-automation; Marketing Automation -- http://www.siebel.com/marketing-automation; Business Intelligence -- http://www.siebel.com/business-intelligence; Integration Solutions -- http://www.siebel.com/integration-solutions; CRM Services -- http://www.siebel.com/crm-services

Except for the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risk or uncertainties. Future operating results of Siebel Systems may differ from the results discussed or forecasted in the forward-looking statements due to factors that include, but are not limited to, risks associated with our pending merger with Oracle Corporation, customer relations, such as the availability of Siebel Systems' products and services, customer implementation of products and services, relationships with customers, third-party vendors and systems integrators, concentration of revenues in a relatively small number of customers, existence of errors or defects in products, ability to successfully manage growth, significant current and expected additional competition and the need to continue to expand product distribution and services offerings. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of Siebel Systems are included in Siebel Systems' Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available at www.sec.gov. Siebel Systems assumes no obligation to update the information in this press release.

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.

Source: Business Wire

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