Siebel OnDemand CRM: has Siebel shot itself in the foot?
Across the board, large enterprise business application vendors have seen licence sales under pressure, with deals taking longer to close and average transaction size having slipped for many vendors to half of the level seen two or three years ago. Many customers have been burnt by long implementations that run over time and over budget and are now turning their attention to smaller implementations to address specific points of pain. Of all the applications companies can implement – including supply chain management, professional services automation, human resources and financials management – customer relationship management has got some bad press over recent years for failing to provide the benefits and return on investment levels promised. And the benefits available are not even as large as for some other applications – almost 50% of companies’ revenues are spent on goods and services purchased, so whatever amount is cut from the bottom line through use of automated supply chain man
