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Area Chooses Siebel CRM OnDemand to Manage Relationships with Corporate Travel Customers; Leading Finnish Travel Agent Deploys Siebel CRM OnDemand Hosted by IBM to Increase Sales Effectiveness and Enhance Customer ServiceBARCELONA, Spain --(Business Wire)-- April 18, 2005 -- Siebel Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:SEBL), the leading provider of customer-facing solutions, today announced that Area has chosen Siebel CRM OnDemand to manage relationships with more than 7,000 corporate travel customers. This leading Finnish travel agency is using Siebel Systems' hosted CRM solution to create a single, comprehensive view of these customers across multiple channels. This strategy enables the company to increase sales effectiveness, improve sales productivity, and enhance customer satisfaction. Established 70 years ago, Area is one of the largest travel agencies in Finland. The company provides leisure and corporate customers with a broad range of travel services, employs 300 staff members, and operates a network of 20 offices in Finland. Area is a wholly owned subsidiary of Finnair and is an American Express Travel Service representative in Finland. "Siebel CRM OnDemand provides Area with one common view of our corporate customers, which we are using to effectively plan and to meet their travel needs," said Hannu Holtari, Development Manager, Area. "We chose CRM OnDemand because it allows us to quickly roll out a highly effective CRM strategy. Siebel CRM OnDemand was the most flexible, functionally rich, and easiest to use of all the hosted CRM solutions we evaluated. The hosted approach also allows us to avoid the up-front investment in a complex technology infrastructure." Prior to the introduction of Siebel CRM OnDemand, Area's relationship managers maintained relationships with corporate customers using a variety of different, disconnected tools and systems. These ranged from spreadsheets to email and paper-based systems. With more and more customers using the Internet to manage their travel needs directly, Area needed to understand more about the needs, behavior, and preferences of this important group of customers in order to retain their business. A consolidated customer view enables the company to better satisfy customers, effectively sell travel services, and increase sales efficiency. Siebel CRM OnDemand improves Area's sales and marketing effectiveness by providing a complete picture of each corporate travel customer, including the company profile, key decision-makers, contract information, and revenue potential. The hosted CRM solution maximizes opportunity management by scheduling meetings with travel prospects, tracking priorities, and managing due dates. Area is also using integrated analytics functionality to review sales cycles, average deal sizes, and corporate travel schedules. This improved intelligence provides deep insight into the business, allowing Area to maximize sales performance. Area is the latest in a growing number of organizations to deploy Siebel CRM OnDemand. Following its European launch in April 2004, 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 is the world's leading provider of customer-facing solutions that deliver demonstrable business results and long-term competitive advantage. Siebel's multichannel offerings allow organizations to intelligently manage and coordinate all customer interactions across the Web, contact center, field sales/service force, branch/retail network, and indirect and partner distribution channels. Siebel solutions draw upon the company's best-in-class capabilities in customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence, and customer data integration and can be deployed as licensed software or as a hosted service. Siebel solutions are tailored to the unique needs of 23 industries and incorporate industry-specific business processes, best practices, and business insight. They are the product of more than $2 billion in R&D investments and reflect over 11 years of experience with more than 4,000 organizations. Together with its extensive global network of alliance partners, Siebel provides the people, process, and technology expertise critical in driving business value from the deployment of customer-facing solutions. Over 3 million users worldwide in organizations of all sizes depend on Siebel solutions to deliver dramatic improvements in how they identify, acquire, retain, and serve customers. 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 and 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. |
