Siebel Gets VerticalSiebel Gets Vertical

Siebel Systems Inc. released the latest version of its hosted customer-relationship-management software, albeit several months behind schedule. The on-demand offering has been customized for the financial-services and insurance, high-tech, life-sciences, and automotive markets. New features include a "sales process coach" that feeds salespeople content relevant to their efforts, beefed-up analytics, and support for four additional languages.

Yankee Group analyst Sheryl Kingstone says she's been waiting for Siebel and its competitors to get sales reps the information they need during the sales cycle in the form of analyst reports, case studies, and other documents. "That's actually helping the sales rep," Kingstone says.

Cendant Corp.'s travel distribution services unit plans to take immediate advantage of the enhanced analytics and new territory-management and role-assignment capabilities, said Nigel Watson, CRM program manager for the unit, during a Siebel conference call. Watson said the ability to be more specific in identifying sales staffers' needs provides much-needed flexibility for its 700-plus Siebel users.