InFact Saves $33,000 Every Quarter Using Siebel CRM OnDemand

InFact Saves $33,000 Every Quarter Using Siebel CRM OnDemand

    Business Editors/High-Tech Editors

    SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 21, 2005--

Automated Forecasting Improves Pipeline Visibility, Manages Multiple Currency Transactions, and Drives Better Business Return
    Siebel Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:SEBL), a leading provider of business applications software, today announced that InFact is saving $33,000 every quarter using Siebel CRM OnDemand. Automated forecasting is helping this leading French technology consulting organization to improve pipeline visibility, manage multiple currency transactions, and drive better business return. Siebel Systems' hosted CRM solution has also enabled InFact to reduce its sales cycle time by 20 percent and increase marketing campaign effectiveness.
    "InFact trades in multiple currencies around the world, and it used to take one person up to four days each quarter to pull together all the different currency rates and fluctuation allowances into one consolidated spreadsheet forecast," said Richard Napier, Director of Business Development, InFact Group. "With Siebel CRM OnDemand, currency conversion, historical exchange rates, and roll-ups are all done automatically. This automated forecasting is saving InFact $33,000 each quarter in reduced overhead. Timely and accurate forecasting is also transforming InFact into a more agile, proactive consultancy."
    The InFact Group (www.infactgroup.com) is a global technology consulting organization based in France, with a presence in many of the world's largest and most prestigious eBusiness and business intelligence deployments. InFact deployed Siebel CRM OnDemand in Europe, the United States, and India last year to create a single, comprehensive view of its customers and partners across multiple channels and touchpoints. By introducing a standard sales, marketing, and service methodology worldwide, the company is optimizing sales performance by efficiently tracking and qualifying every sales opportunity. The company can also schedule and record account-related activities; identify top-performing accounts; and conduct rigorous analysis of customer interactions by region, industry, and revenue. In addition, InFact is able to identify new business opportunities within existing accounts, thereby increasing revenue per customer.
    Siebel CRM OnDemand is instrumental in driving lead capture and opportunity management. InFact is rapidly integrating internal applications and intranet sites used for capturing sales leads -- resulting in a faster and more efficient supply of business leads to be qualified and converted into opportunities. Siebel CRM OnDemand also provides a single, coherent picture of the development of each opportunity, using standard terminology.
    InFact also uses the powerful sales analytics tools within Siebel CRM OnDemand to compare average sales cycles, win rates, deal sizes, and other key performance metrics. The company can analyze customers and prospects by industry, region, and even city. This information is invaluable in determining whether InFact has met its targets and where the company needs to focus its recruitment and training resources. Additionally, the solution's analytic tools enable InFact to better manage and monitor its sales pipeline and improve sales forecasting. Pipeline analysis for the current quarter is a key feature of the company's management meetings, and Siebel CRM OnDemand is used to display revenue forecasts for the quarter by industry, channel type, and geography.
    Siebel CRM OnDemand is also maximizing marketing campaign effectiveness. In minutes, InFact can generate a tightly targeted group of customers for a campaign, prepare a compelling offer -- either by email or post -- and execute the campaign. Once complete, the company is able to track the campaign response and circulate the opportunities among the sales team. Siebel CRM OnDemand is also used to manage adequate stocks of collateral ahead of any campaign taking place.
    One of the most important aspects of the CRM system is the resilient hosting environment that safeguards and maintains InFact's data within a 24x7 secure and reliable infrastructure. InFact is confident that this bulletproof approach ensures data is always available -- whatever the scenario. "An outage, however short, would have a serious impact on our ability to do business. Thankfully, we can rest assured that the hosting abilities and resources will ensure we receive continuous application availability," Napier explained.
    He concluded, "As a small, fast-growing organization, we wanted to capitalize on the benefits of CRM, but couldn't afford the investment in an on premise CRM solution. Siebel CRM OnDemand provides almost all the functionality of an enterprise CRM solution for minimal advance capital outlay. It means we have the information at our fingertips needed to compete on an equal footing with the multinational systems integration companies. The other advantages of Siebel CRM OnDemand include the seamless migration path to Siebel CRM Professional Edition, to Siebel's enterprise applications, and open standard integration to other applications."
    InFact is the latest in a growing number of organizations to deploy Siebel CRM OnDemand. Following its European launch last year, Siebel CRM OnDemand is experiencing significant success in the UK, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, The Netherlands, Nordics, Russia, and The Czech Republic. With Siebel CRM OnDemand's support for English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German languages, European companies can now take advantage of Siebel Systems' proven CRM capabilities provided by a hosted solution that enables companies to sell to, market to, and serve customers in their native languages. Siebel CRM OnDemand is the industry's first and only hosted CRM solution designed to work in conjunction with "on premise" Siebel CRM systems. Sharing a common data model with Siebel 7 applications, Siebel CRM OnDemand offers an easy migration path to on premise Siebel CRM systems.

    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. 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, Inc. is a leading provider of business applications software, enabling corporations to sell to, market to, and serve customers across multiple channels and lines of business. With more than 4,000 customer deployments worldwide, Siebel Systems provides organizations with a proven set of industry-specific best practices, CRM applications, market-leading analytics products, 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 30 countries.

    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 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.

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CONTACT: Siebel Systems, Inc. Stacey Burbach, 480-377-3725 email: stacey.burbach@siebel.com

KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA FRANCE INTERNATIONAL EUROPE INDUSTRY KEYWORD: HARDWARE SOFTWARE NETWORKING INTERNET E-COMMERCE PRODUCT SOURCE: Siebel Systems, Inc.

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