Siebel eAutomotive 7 Delivers Industry Leading Automotive CRM at the Lowest Total Cost of Ownership
SAN MATEO, Calif.--March 19, 2002--Comprehensive Out-of-the-Box Automotive Functionality Provides
Solutions to the Key Business Challenges of Global Automotive
Enterprises
Siebel Systems, Inc. , the world's leading provider of eBusiness applications software, today announced new and enhanced functionality from Siebel eAutomotive 7. Reflecting Siebel Systems' proven domain, industry, and technology expertise, Siebel eAutomotive 7 provides depth and breadth of functionality in sales, marketing, service, and other customer-facing business processes tailored specifically for the automotive and vehicles industry, resulting in faster deployments, high rates of end user adoption, and a rapid return on investment. Industry leaders such as DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company, Mitsubishi Motor Sales of America, Inc., and Renault S.A. have all licensed Siebel eBusiness Applications for their automotive CRM strategies.
Unparalleled CRM Functionality Delivers Compelling Return on
Investment
Siebel eAutomotive 7 takes into account the unique and complex requirements of the automotive industry by addressing key strategic and tactical business challenges. Due to the significant role of retailers in the automotive ecosystem, improvements and new functionality facilitating collaboration between automotive companies and their dealer networks were key developments in Siebel eAutomotive 7. In addition, Siebel eAutomotive 7 allows automotive companies to integrate their global operations, align separate business units and functional groups, and develop multi-channel capabilities.
"The Siebel Automotive team has the industry expertise required to understand our business issues. They have taken their knowledge of the automotive industry and combined it with Siebel's core technology to provide an automotive solution that addresses our business challenges," said Patrik Riese, Relationship Marketing Manager at Saab Automobile AB. "Saab selected Siebel eAutomotive because it provides the ability to fully leverage our customer relationships across our diverse and complex ecosystem."
"Our automotive clients face a number of business challenges that stem directly from their sheer size and extensive customer base. These include channel partner integration with dealers; management of global, diversified businesses; and technology scalability issues," said Rob Burt, PwC Consulting partner focused on CRM and Automotive in North America. "PwC Consulting shares with Siebel a vision for helping automotive companies resolve these issues by implementing comprehensive multichannel CRM solutions."
Siebel eAutomotive 7 solves the key CRM business challenges faced by global automotive enterprises. It provides functionality that is critical to the automotive industry, including:
| -- | Efficient lead and promotion management: Siebel eAutomotive 7 enables analysis of sales and customer demographic data, identification of lucrative customer segments, creation of personalized offers and targeted messages, and the capture and tracking of leads from any source. |
| -- | Dealer collaboration: Siebel eAutomotive 7 enables the integration of car company and dealer CRM to provide a uniform view of the consumer. It provides CRM tools to dealers for sales, service, and parts interactions with their customers; bi-directional flow of sales, service, and parts information with appropriate links to legacy systems; and security so that the right person in the dealership sees the appropriate information. |
| -- | Configurable governance: Siebel eAutomotive 7 provides the flexibility required to support any governance structure that a customer chooses to adopt. It provides the capability to grant and restrict access based on business rules that differ between dealerships, job responsibilities, and individual positions. |
Siebel eAutomotive 7 vastly improves the ability of automotive companies to strategically leverage each customer relationship throughout the customer lifecycle. This increases customer retention, customer satisfaction, and ultimately profitability for both automotive companies and their dealers.
"The Automotive industry exhibits many characteristics that are unique in the business world. These unique business processes create requirements that a generic CRM application can not meet without significant modifications," said Kurt Olnhausen, General Manager of Siebel Automotive. "Once you start modifying a generic application, you quickly negate the value of an off-the-shelf product. Siebel eAutomotive 7 eliminates the need for this type of modification, allowing car companies to focus on incorporating the processes that create their specific competitive advantages. At the end of the day, creating and leveraging competitive advantage is what the best software applications do."
Smart Web Architecture Enables Rapid Deployment and High User
Acceptance
Siebel eAutomotive 7 was built on the foundation of the newly announced Siebel 7 platform. With the release of Siebel 7, Siebel Systems introduced the Siebel Smart Web Architecture, the industry's first and only zero-footprint Web architecture that provides high levels of interactivity previously available only from Windows desktop applications. Siebel 7 was built from the ground up to operate in heterogeneous environments and by supporting integration via an "application network," organizations can not only integrate front office and back office systems, but also hundreds of other applications essential to the Automotive and Vehicles industry. By offering robust application network support, Siebel eAutomotive 7 ensures interoperability with the many applications within an automotive organization's systems environment, including homegrown legacy systems, industry-specific niche applications, and external applications for collaborating with partner systems.
Robust Analytical Capabilities Provide Customer and Business
Insight
Siebel eAutomotive 7 is also shipping with Siebel Analytics 7, which includes visual, prepackaged, and fully configurable reports and interactive dashboards with best practice metrics for sales, marketing, service, partner management, and executive users. All Siebel Industry Applications deliver tailored and robust analytical and reporting capabilities that provide role-based analytics with insight into customer trends and overall business performance.
Automated Upgrade Path Provides Low Total Cost of Ownership
Siebel eAutomotive 7 offers a clear and easy upgrade path for customers, including automated upgrade functionality, resulting in reduced deployment times and the lowest TCO. Unlike most applications software, Siebel eAutomotive 7 allows existing customers to employ an automated process to upgrade to the latest version of the application by combining and merging customizations with new functionality on the enhanced platform.
About Siebel Systems
Siebel Systems, Inc. is the world's leading provider of eBusiness applications software. Siebel Systems provides an integrated family of eBusiness applications software, enabling multichannel sales, marketing, and customer service systems to be deployed over the Web, in call centers, in the field, through reseller channels, and across retail and dealer networks. Siebel Systems' sales and service facilities are located in more than 32 countries. For more information, please visit Siebel Systems' Web site at www.siebel.com.
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.
Except for the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The success of the agreements and products described above and the 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 new versions and new products, the availability of Siebel Systems' products and services, implementation of products and services, existence of errors or defects in products, rapid technological change, dependence on the Internet, 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.