JD Edwards Integration With Siebel CRM On Demand: Extending Your CRM Choice With Siebel CRM On Demand

The big news at this year's Siebel User Week was Siebel CRM OnDemand, the much-anticipated hosted version of the market's leading product.

It has been said that Siebel is late to the hosting game, but in business, it is often better to be late than early. That way you can learn from the mistakes of the pioneers.

Siebel also improves on the current model by leveraging the fact that it offers the most functionally rich applications on the market.

CRM OnDemand includes built-in analytics that identify a variety of things, including data about why deals are won or lost, who the most profitable customers are, and projected versus historical revenue. The analytic capabilities extend to create interactive charts, pivot tables and reports.

CRM OnDemand also supports multiple currencies and languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Chinese.

Another improvement was the decision to host the solution in conjunction with Big Blue. As an old industry truism goes, "No one ever got fired for choosing IBM." Although this isn't 100% accurate, using IBM as host should create greater peace of mind among members of management -- who may be concerned about whether their data will be secure and whether support will be strong when the time comes to make a purchase decision.

So the real news at Siebel's User Week was the unexpected reaction among customers that they would consider using Siebel CRM OnDemand in places they would never use a non-compatible hosted solution.

Those who seemed to find the offering most compelling include customers with small divisions, customers with remote offices in locations with limited IT support, and customers with large networks of captive and non-captive dealers.