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Siebel CRM OnDemand Continues to Gain Worldwide Momentum; Customer Wins, Analyst Reports and Award Underscore Recent AccomplishmentsBARCELONA, Spain --(Business Wire)-- April 19, 2005 -- Siebel Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:SEBL), the leading provider of customer-facing solutions, today highlighted at Siebel User Week 2005, Barcelona, the continued growth of its Siebel CRM OnDemand business. As disclosed in the company's preliminary first quarter earnings announcement and conference call on April 5, Siebel Systems is projecting an estimated growth rate of 245% in year-over-year Siebel CRM OnDemand total contract value, and an 18% quarter-over-quarter growth rate in subscribers for the quarter ended March 31, 2005. Based on this estimate, Siebel now has more than 33,000 Siebel CRM OnDemand subscribers. These strong results have been driven by customer wins across organizations of all sizes in multiple geographies, with many new customers in Europe as well as North America. In addition, Siebel CRM OnDemand has continued to be recognized by leading industry analysts, and recently won a prestigious IBM Beacon award. "We have delivered the industry's only complete pre-built hosted solution built on Siebel's proven technology platform," said Bruce Cleveland, Senior Vice President and General Manager, OnDemand and SMB at Siebel Systems. "While our solution provides full customization capabilities, our approach is unique because we deliver 85 percent of the customizations and embedded best practices that we know customers require, out-of-the-box, with Siebel CRM OnDemand. In contrast, other generic hosted vendors provide very basic offerings that force each customer to undertake time-consuming and expensive customizations. Siebel's commitment to hosted CRM and to our customers' success is underscored by our business momentum and recent industry analyst reports. We will continue deepening this commitment, and delivering best-in-class pre-built CRM solutions for our customers." Strong European Presence Just One Year After European Launch In just one year since Siebel Systems launched European language versions of Siebel CRM OnDemand at Siebel User Week in Cannes, France in April, 2004, the company has built a strong customer base in Europe with its hosted CRM solution. In the past quarter, Siebel CRM OnDemand has been selected by an impressive number of new customers across Europe, representing companies of all sizes and industries, including: -- Allied Worldwide (UK), a worldwide IT co-sourcing company focused on delivering flexible and innovative solutions in an increasingly demanding global environment, to deliver high performance business solutions against ever decreasing time scales; -- Area (Finland), one of the largest travel agencies in Finland, which provides leisure and corporate customers with a broad range of travel services, employs 300 staff members, and operates a network of 20 offices; -- Maskina AS (Norway), an industry leader in the provision of IP telephony, enterprise mobile services, and platforms for advanced mobile communication services; -- Relational Tools (Spain), which serves acquirers, issuers and retailers in the development and operation of sophisticated bank and cash card systems; -- SLIB (France), a software company that specializes in securities and stock exchange activities. Located in Madrid, Relational Tools selected Siebel CRM OnDemand because of its robust feature-set that allows the company to focus on the execution of sales, marketing and services. "The Siebel Analytics were vital to giving us a 360-degree vision of our customer, and for linking marketing, sales and services with best practices," said Miguel Lozano, Managing Partner, Business Development, Relational Tools. "Being a software company ourselves, it was just as important that we were able to deploy rapidly with little customization and almost no upfront costs." Key to the momentum of Siebel's hosted CRM solution 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 seven upgrades that include 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 for Financial Services, High Technology, Life Sciences and Automotive; and the first built-in contact center solution available as an extension to Siebel CRM OnDemand. What Industry Experts Are Saying About Hosted CRM For the second year in a row, Siebel CRM OnDemand was recognized as a leader in the rapidly growing hosted CRM market, according to a March 2005 Forrester Wave report(1). Several other important industry analyst reports from Yankee, Gartner and Beagle Research were published reviewing Siebel CRM OnDemand's hosted strategy and product offerings. Beagle Research -- "Evaluating the Options for Vertical Hosted CRM," Denis Pombriant, Beagle Research, January 10, 2005, Forrester Research -- "The Forrester Wave: Hosted Sales Force Automation, Q1 2005, Hands-On Evaluation of Hosted Sales Force Automation Vendors across 160 Criteria" by Liz Herbert with Erin Kinikin, Jessica Harrington, April 1, 2005, Gartner -- "Siebel Closes Function Gap for OnDemand CRM," Joe Galvin, Vice President, Research Director, Gartner Inc, FirstTake from January 13, 2005, Yankee Group -- "With Release 6, Siebel CRM OnDemand Vies for Number One," Yankee Group DecisionNote Product Review, March 18, 2005 by Sheryl Kingstone, Customer-Centric Strategies Program Manager, [email protected], 617-880-0273. For more information on how to obtain a copy of these reports, please contact Beagle Research at www.beagleresearch.com, Forrester Research at www.forrester.com, Gartner at www.gartner.com, and Yankee Group at www.yankeegroup.com. Awards Siebel CRM OnDemand also received the coveted IBM PartnerWorld Beacon award given to partners who deliver the best global marketing solutions. Siebel CRM OnDemand was named as the winner of the "Global Solutions Marketing -- On Demand" category in the annual IBM PartnerWorld Beacon Awards competition, honoring IBM Business Partners for their ingenuity, customer satisfaction and outstanding achievements in providing on demand business solutions. 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 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 & 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. (1) The Forrester Wave: Hosted Sales Force Automation, Q1 2005, L. Herbert (with Erin Kinikin and Jessica Harrington), March 31, 2005. |
