We Blog CRM

Solutions provider Empirix Inc. representatives were tickled pink to announce the bestowal of the 2006 CRM Excellence Award upon their Hammer Service Assurance testing solution for Siebel. Based on hard data, the award is presented to the company that has most distinguished itself in CRM by Technoloy Marketing Corporation’s customer interaction solutions trade publication; 2006 marks the completion of back-to-back wins for Empirix.

“We are excited to have earned this award from Customer Interaction Solutions,” said Empirix, Inc. product management vice president Duane Sword. We know from first-hand experience that CRM applications can be difficult to implement. Our Hammer Service Assurance for Siebel helps organizations successfully and confidently implement these business-critical systems.”

In press material, Siebel customer interaction solutions editorial director Tracey Schelmetic stated that the rollout of the customized Siebel Call Center application upgrade was “the smoothest we’ve ever had.” Empirix takes particular pride in the CRM rollout process, and Schelmetic says simply that “CRM rollouts are complex. They need to be well planned from start to finish to avoid pitfalls and achieve exceptional results … Empirix’s case study demonstrated the importance of thorough and proactive testing to ensure that end users will not be negatively impacted.”

Hammer Service Assurance for Siebel earned the award through its success in using Empirix’s patented Hammer transaction-engine technology to drive realistic, production-level caller and agent traffic against applications and networks, while simultaneously measuring how all contact center applications and infrastructure components react, collecting end-user focused metrics like time-to-answer, response times, caller-attached data, and screen-pop success rates.

McGraw-Hill Construction is now working with Oracle to integrate Oracle’s Siebel CRM OnDemand into its network. McGraw-Hill’s primary objective is to enable network users to efficiently manage their customer leads but with the integration of Siebel CRM OnDemand, McGraw-Hill’s customer base of design and construction professionals will also quickly be able to prioritize projects, identify customer needs, and track project status. As a bonus, personal productivity will be maximized due to the integration with Microsoft Outlook and PDAs. Design and construction professionals who use the McGraw-Hill Construction Network will now be able to serve their customers more efficiently with their enhanced access to intelligence, forecasting, trend analysis, and project data.

Along with the sales force automation capabilities that will be available to McGraw-Hill Construction Network’s Platinum subscribers, Oracle will join McGraw-Hill in planning and conducting marketing seminars and road shows that focus on lead management, targeted marketing and forecasting analysis. Rob Reid, group vice president at Oracle spoke in glowing terms of McGraw-Hill Construction’s innovative techniques for connecting people, projects and products in the construction and design industry and also predicted that McGraw-Hill’s subscribers will "now have a complete, end-to-end solution to prospect, manage and close more business on one platform." Oracle’s Siebel CRM OnDemand is an Internet-based CRM solution that is offered at a fixed price per user per month. OnDemand is affordable for most companies because it does not require an up-front investment in IT.

Go to: McGraw-Hill Construction, Oracle’s Siebel CRM OnDemand

Select Comfort is in the process of deploying a Siebel analytics solution. Select Comfort has 400 stores and revenues of around $ 690 million. The company chose Siebel because of its user friendly interface, speedy report generating capabilities, and the promise by Oracle that the Oracle CRM and ERP suites will be integrated with the Siebel solution.

The General Medical Council (GMC), which is the official regulator of the medical profession in the United Kingdom, will be using Siebel Public Sector for its case management platform. GMC hopes to use the Siebel Business Analytics to learn more about the major processes and activities involved in carrying out complaint handling and investigation. dmreview.com says:

A key aspect of the GMC’s information strategy is to provide access to some of its information for a variety of external audiences through Internet portals.

Go to: General Medical Council Selects Siebel Public Sector

Van Lanschot, Holland-based private and commercial bank, will be deploying CRM technology supplied by Siebel in summer 2006. The bank will be using the Siebel Finance platform to avail an integrated analytics functionality that is specific to the financial services industry.

The Siebel CRM technology will help the bank to increase cross-selling and increase customers in its three main customer groups, high net-worth individuals, midsize businesses, including family businesses and institutional investors.

InStranet, Inc., a global provider of multi-channel knowledge applications, announced that the integration between its Contact Centers In-Line(TM) (CCIL) application and Siebel customer facing solutions version 7 has been successfully validated by Siebel Systems Inc. The combination of CCIL and Siebel customer-facing solutions offers a one-point reference source to customers for information on CRM, products, and service.

Customers become more self-reliant and are able to reduce their dependence on call agents by making use of the CCIL Web self-service capabilities. InStranet is based on J2EEE and needs a Web application server as well as a relational database. Requests made from the Siebel application to the InStranet are managed by the InStranet Siebel Request Connector.

The Siebel Business Analytics 7.8 is a significant new launch from Siebel Systems Inc. The latest version of this popular business analytics solution incorporates a number of predictive analytic solutions which results in an improvement in intelligent customer interactions.

The new release also offers new enterprise BI platform products that provide increased functionality. Siebel considers the solution to be a next generation BI and analytics solution that will enable companies to offer role-based information in real-time to the appropriate employee; thereby driving the decision-making process in an effective manner.

Intelligent real-time customer interactions are made possible by the new Real-time Decisions (RTD) products that make use of predictive analysis. Intelligent customer interactions across the various customer-facing channels such as contact centers, websites, etc can result in strengthening customer relationships.

The predictive analytics integrate context and behavior observed in real-time with already present information on the customer and put forward the most appropriate proposition under the circumstances. The solution facilitates the putting forth of intelligent offers, cross-selling, and customer retention management. Industry specific versions of the Siebel RTD analytic applications are available for the communications and media and the financial services sectors.

The applications that comprise the Siebel Business Analytics are modular in architecture and can integrate and convert data, from sources such as Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, etc, into information that can be actioned upon by users working in various business functions such as sales, HR, finance, supply chain, etc.

The 7.8 series of analytic applications has been optimized to make maximum use of database platforms such as the Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, Oracle, and Teradata. The Siebel Business Analytics 7.8 offers IT professionals scalable Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) functionality. siebel.com says:

In addition to the new Siebel RTD predictive analytic applications, Siebel has significantly updated and enhanced its entire analytic applications product family with additional ‘best practice’ metrics and processes, enhanced usability, visualization and interactivity, additional role-specific dashboards, and new analytic agents and workflows.

Go to: Siebel Systems Announces General Availability of Siebel Business Analytics 7.8

NBOGroup, which is based in Singapore, has made a smooth transition from Salesforce.com to Siebel CRM OnDemand. NBOGroup is a leadership development, consulting, and training organization. The company chose Siebel as CRM OnDemand allows it to structure and name information fields according to the local requirements. siebel.com says:

"This powerful hosted CRM solution enables our marketing staff to manage customer relationships at every point of interaction, across the Web, email, and phone."

Go to: Singapore-based NBOGroup Selects Siebel CRM OnDemand

The Siebel CRM Professional Edition 7.8 is an on-premise CRM solution for SMBs that integrates seamlessly with desktop and web applications. It provides call center functionality by integrating with the hosted contact center offered by Siebel. The edition 7.8 also integrates with Microsoft SharePoint and connects to Microsoft Exchange and Outlook.

Siebel CRM OnDemand is a low-risk and flexible hosted CRM solution developed by Siebel Systems. It is easy to deploy and offers a range of services. Its benefits include an improvement in pipeline management, improved efficiencies at contact centers, decision making based real-time data and therefore can be more in tune with the current scenario and possible changes in the future. crmondemand.com says:

The result is that Siebel CRM OnDemand provides businesses of all shapes and sizes with a centralized repository of customer data and a real-time snapshot of all customer interactions.

Go to: Siebel CRM OnDemand