Siebel Systems Ships Siebel Automotive 7.7; Siebel Automotive 7.7 Delivers New Functionality for Captive Finance and Manufacturer/Dealer Collaboration

SAN MATEO, Calif.--May 1, 20047, 2004--Siebel Systems, Inc. , a leading provider of business applications software, today announced the release of Siebel Automotive 7.7, a comprehensive suite of sales, marketing, and service solutions that enables vehicle manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and captive finance providers to improve customer acquisition and retention across all customer touchpoints, including the Web, call center, field organization, and partner networks. In particular, the new release includes new solutions supporting key business processes for captive finance, dealership operations, and collaboration between manufacturers and dealers.

"Siebel Systems continues to take the lead in delivering CRM solutions for the automotive industry," said John Gray, General Manager, Siebel Automotive. "Siebel Automotive 7.7 was developed with extensive input from major manufacturers and their dealers. In particular, we worked closely with the world's leading captive finance companies to identify new methods of leveraging core Siebel functionality to create new functionality that specifically addresses the unique challenges captive finance companies (captives) face. Siebel Systems is the first and only CRM provider to offer automotive-specific solutions that solve challenges across the enterprise -- for manufacturer, dealer, and captive."

Captive Finance Solution Set Improves Relationships, Customer Retention

Vehicle captive finance organizations are facing the challenge of retaining customers, driving efficiencies, and reducing costs. With Siebel Automotive 7.7 for Captive Finance, these organizations have a comprehensive set of tools for credit origination, customer service, delinquent balance collections, vehicle title management, end-of-term management, and other key business processes.

Toyota Financial Services(1) (TFS), a subsidiary of Toyota Financial Services Corporation in Japan, is leveraging Siebel Automotive 7.7's captive finance functionality to support its strategic plans for growth and profitability. "Siebel Systems is the only supplier that provides deep and robust functionality specifically for captive finance companies," said Dean Shold, TFS Chief Technology Officer. "The built-in industry best practices of Siebel Automotive 7.7 will help us achieve our aggressive goals for delivering the best customer service in the industry."

Siebel Automotive 7.7 for Captive Finance delivers a number of tangible benefits. Captives will be able to maintain strong relationships with customers throughout the ownership life cycle, reinforcing the brand image and building loyalty, improving customer satisfaction, and increasing customer retention. The product also promotes collaboration between the captive and its manufacturer, helping to create complete customer data, reduce operational costs, and improve marketing effectiveness. Captives can leverage the resulting comprehensive customer view to gain insight into customer needs, improving their ability to cross-sell and up-sell financial products and services for increased revenues and profits. Moreover, they can collaborate with their manufacturer on customer retention activities, utilizing complete customer data to understand the customer and market the right product to each customer at the right time. These customer retention promotions can occur throughout the ownership life cycle, including when a customer attains positive equity in a loan or in the months prior to the end of a lease.

New Functionality Helps Strengthen Manufacturer/Dealer Relationships

In the past, the inability to collaborate and share customer information effectively has often resulted in revenue losses for both manufacturers and dealers. The Collaborative Dealer Relationships solution set within Siebel Automotive 7.7 for Manufacturers encourages collaboration and cooperation, ensuring that manufacturers and their dealers consistently apply best practices to achieve a consistent customer experience, better control of sales opportunities, and an increase in customer lifetime value.

In developing this solution set, Siebel Systems worked closely not only with major manufacturers but also with their dealers to identify the enhancements that deliver the most value for both partners. The Collaborative Dealer Relationships solution set brings greater efficiency and productivity to dealers by improving lead management capabilities in the showroom, enabling dealer goal setting, providing management dashboards, and facilitating dealer marketing. Specific capabilities include showroom guest log management, opportunity management, budgeting and forecasting, the ability to establish rules for customer follow-up, reassignment of customers and opportunities, and promotions management.

The solution set enables the easy exchange of customer, vehicle, and lead information maintained by both the manufacturer and dealers. The enhanced marketing functionality enables dealers to effectively leverage this complete data by quickly and economically creating targeted marketing campaigns that drive vehicle, parts, and service revenues. Similarly, this exchange of data provides manufacturers visibility into lead status, enabling them to measure the effectiveness of marketing promotions and the dealers' sales processes and work closely with their dealers to increase close rates and customer loyalty.

Automotive Industry Analytics Improve Understanding of Customer Base

Siebel Automotive 7.7 leverages the functionally rich, architecturally superior Siebel Analytics platform to provide the information manufacturers, dealers, and captive finance organizations need to better understand their customers; assess the effectiveness and return on investment of promotions across all channels; and analyze vehicle, service, and parts sales data. The analytics functionality gives marketing managers at car companies and dealerships instant access to information from across the manufacturer/dealer network for strategic analysis and decision-making. It includes a library of packaged analysis applications for sales, marketing, and service as well as powerful ad hoc query and reporting capabilities.

Enhancements Improve Usability and Lower TCO

In developing Siebel 7.7 and Siebel Automotive 7.7, the Siebel development teams focused on improving user interaction with applications by simplifying common actions, streamlining navigation, enhancing the appearance and readability of data, and providing embedded role-based guidance. Usability enhancements specific to the automotive industry include drop-down menus and pick lists that guide dealers through building a targeted customer list for email, direct mail, and fax promotions. These enhancements substantially increase productivity and accelerate dealer adoption.

Total cost of ownership (TCO) was also a major focus in developing the underlying Siebel 7.7 platform. The design and engineering teams focused on driving cost out of installation, configuration, integration, and operation and making the software faster, easier, and less costly to implement and maintain. Siebel Systems estimates that the cumulative result is a 39 percent reduction in overall TCO as compared to previous Siebel releases. These and other TCO enhancements make Siebel Automotive 7.7 the most cost-effective CRM solution available today for the automotive industry.

For more information on Siebel Automotive 7.7, please visit http://www.siebel.com/automotive.

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.

(1) TFS is the finance and insurance brand for Toyota in the United States, offering retail auto financing and leasing through participating dealerships and Toyota Motor Credit Corporation (TMCC) and extended service contracts through Toyota Motor Insurance Services (TMIS).

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