Siebel Unified Messaging Framework - Part 1

The Death Match That Never
Happened
–
Siebel
vs.
Salesforce
As a follower of news and articles revolving the Siebel world,
you might have stumbled upon the Fortune article titled
“Siebel v Salesforce — Lessons from the Death of a Tech
Goliath” written by former Siebel Systems executive Bruce
Cleveland.
Despite the somewhat misleading title which suggests that
Siebel is dead (which it is clearly not), I enjoyed reading
the article and following the discussion it spawned.
In the article, Bruce confronts the “nice tale” that David
Salesforce defeated Goliath Siebel in the first decade of this
century. Bruce argues, and I go 100% with him, that Siebel
Systems was definitely on its knees between 2001 and 2004 due
to a global recession but it didn’t share the same market
segment with the new player in the CRM SaaS market,
Salesforce.com.
Image source: Wikipedia
I joined Siebel Systems in 2001 and witnessed how its upper
management tried to avoid the unavoidable. Imagine, you have
to go full stop from being the fastest growing company in
history to actually laying off 40% of your workforce, giving
in to the weak economy.
As we all know, Siebel Systems survived, albeit bruised and
emerged from the recession with a renewed portfolio including
Sales
Service
Call Center
Customer Self Service
Partner Relationship Management
Marketing (now integrated with Siebel Analytics, the tobe Oracle BI flagship)
Loyalty
Product, Pricing and Order Management
Master Data Management
The above is an incomplete list but still constitutes a suite
of functionality available in more than 20 industry specific
flavors that most vendors can just dream of today. I believe
it was the wisest decision of the Siebel management to keep
investing in development during the recession. “Hit the road
running” was a phrase often heard in those days.
With a portfolio like the above, seeing Siebel only as CRM or
Call Center software would have been a mistake in 2005, and it
is even more so today.
With good reasoning, Mr. Cleveland lays out why Salesforce
flourished while Siebel’s sales slumped. Primarily because
Salesforce was picking up customers in the SMB market, a
market which Siebel tried to reach with its MidMarket offering
but failed because even the stripped-down product was too
complex for SMBs.
Siebel CRM is in its
for the needs of the
Siebel was into the
cool, with sales.com
successful Siebel CRM
very DNA an on-premise product, designed
biggest of the big global corporations.
cloud (or SaaS) business before it was
and some years later with the much more
OnDemand.
CRM OnDemand continues to be hosted by Oracle and I would
rather compare Salesforce’s success in the SaaS market to how
Oracle does with CRM OnDemand and its recent Sales Cloud
product (based on Fusion Applications). Comparing Siebel CRM
on-premise to a cloud product is too much an “oranges vs.
apples” situation and if you are serious about your expertise
in the CRM market, you should know better.
The focus of Bruce’s article is on what companies can learn
from Siebel’s struggle and Salesforce’s success, which makes
it even better from an educational standpoint.
If you want to join the discussion, please also read Bruce’s
follow-up article on his own blog as well as Dave Kellogg’s
analysis.
Bruce has taken the time to comment on Dave’s post and shares
some more executive insight into the history of Siebel and why
some decisions were made.
Fellow Siebelite Richard has also published his take on the
Siebel vs. Salesforce story.
If you want a blast from the past, an interview with Bruce
Cleveland from Nov 2005, shortly after Oracle announced to
acquire Siebel Systems is found here.
Summary
While many people still are under the impression that Siebel
CRM is dead, my personal experience and contact with students,
consultants and customers confirms otherwise. With an
unmatched array of functionality and Open UI, Siebel is well
equipped to stay. In the future we might see attempts to move
Siebel to the cloud but in its DNA it is an on-premise
product, and a good one to that. So please stop comparing it
to cloud based software.
have a nice day
@lex
Siebel Themed Crossword
In the spirit of weekend relaxation (and
probably motivated by the 20th Anniversary of
Siebel last year), we are pleased to present to
you the Siebel-themed crossword. It’s not easy,
but it should be fun. You can access the online
version (ODE – Siebel Crossword) or the paper
version to print and play at home. (ODE – Siebel Crossword
Paper Version). There are some easy clues, and some not so
easy. Enjoy!
No prizes, just fun. If you have solved all the answers, let
us know on @twitter. Use the hashtag #seblcrw and tell us how
fast you did it, or what clue you are stuck on! And if you
really get stuck there is a cheat feature.
Feel free to share the official short urls :
ODE – Siebel Crossword Online = http://od-ed.com/w2AQk
ODE – Siebel Crossword Paper Version = http://od-ed.com/Mf72J
Voiceovers
These days I spend a fair amount of time doing voiceovers for
videos. It is really rather fun (since I love language,
everything and anything about voice, speech, accent, and
intonation).I have also been researching how the famous voices
make it work. So sometimes, I listen to the following audio.
For some light relief – this is how a voice-over artist REALLY
makes his presence felt. Please be aware there is some
swearing in this audio.
The word shoals (as in shoals of fish) gives me goosebumps
every time. Listen. While you are at it, have a good laugh
with the other audio about soap :).
Changes in Oracle's Patching
Strategy for Siebel CRM
If you are following the various articles on Siebel Open UI on
My Oracle Support (hopefully using the great Open UI
Information Center available as Document 1511846.2), you might
have stumbled upon Oracle Support Document 1535281.1 (Latest
recommended maintenance pack for Siebel Open UI on Siebel
Version 8.1.1.x and Version 8.2.2.x) which holds some
interesting information regarding Oracle’s strategy for
releasing quick fixes, maintenance releases or patches for
future Siebel versions.
The biggest news is that from Innovation Pack 2013 (i.e.
version 8.1.1.11 and 8.2.2.4) onwards, Oracle will provide
monthly patchsets which introduce a fifth digit in the version
number.
Source: My Oracle Support
So the January patchset for 8.1.1.11 is 8.1.1.11.3, as you can
see in the above screenshot.
The patches can be downloaded as usual from My Oracle Support.
Bringing the new monthly patchset strategy together with the
traditional version paths results in the following diagram:
Example version path from Siebel 8.0 to 8.1.1.11.3
Explanation:
When a Siebel customer goes from an older major release such
as 8.0 to a newer one such as 8.1.1, a full upgrade is
required. Besides physical schema changes, the full upgrade
always includes the notorious repository merge and subsequent
conflict resolution and post-merge fixup which is usually
measured in person months or even years (for larger projects).
Once the newer release is reached, customers can apply patches
or quick fixes without the need to merge repositories.
Since 8.1.1.10, Oracle delivers innovation packs (one per
year), the current being IP 2013. To reach an innovation pack
level, customers must not only apply the patch but also run
the Incremental Repository Merge (IRM) which is (as of
8.1.1.11) basically the same as a full upgrade, albeit a bit
more automated. Still there might be conflicts to resolved and
things could break and require fixing.
If you are already on 8.1.1.11 (or 8.2.2.4), you can obtain
the monthly patchsets which are just that, a patch. So there
is no repository merge to do.
Monthly patchsets replace planned 8.1.1.12 / 8.2.2.5 fix pack
As announced in MOS document 1600520.1, “The new Patchset
process will make redundant the planned release of Siebel CRM
version 8.1.1.12 / 8.2.2.5 Fix Pack (FP) in early 2014.” But,
so the same announcement assures us, IP 2014 is still going
ahead.
have a nice day
@lex
Jargon Busting
The world we work in loves jargon. Let’s
terms we work with (CRM, SRF, SEM) are
outside world in the wide sense. Worse
love mean various things to different
busting surprises:
face it, many of the
impenetrable to the
still, the terms we
people. Some jargon
Crew Resource Management in aviation
Solid Recovered Fuels in waste and energy management
Standard Error of the Mean in statistics
Any time new students and
be an interesting jargon
room. Policy Automation is
and Backward Chaining,
(ha!), they all get us in
new jargon meet, there is bound to
busting challenge in the training
a great example. Inference, Forward
Determination, Natural Language
a bit of a spin.
So we decided to begin a “jargon buster” micro-lecture series
for Policy Automation. If you go to the ODE Online Library and
scroll down the page to the bottom of the list of training
modules, you will see “OPA – Jargon Buster”.
There are only three modules right now, but there are three
more in the process of being written. We are travelling a lot
right now so it is a little bit of a challenge and hope you
will understand.
But we will update this blog when the others come out. It is
free and we hope you can learn from it, and be inspired to
extend your CRM reach by investigating this wonderful tool.
Infographic: APM for CRM
Germain Software has just released a new infographic titled
“APM for CRM”. It shows the state of APM for CRM applications,
it features visual content from a Fall 2013 survey of the IT
professionals who listed Customer Relationship Management
(CRM) and/or e-commerce and Order Management as their top
priorities (#1 or #2) for APM.
The key to Application Performance Management for CRM?
Performance. The top three priorities for APM are increasing
performance for end users, reducing risks linked to poor
application performance, and measuring and analyzing
performance. All roads lead back to performance! Closely
related to performance, the top challenge for Order Management
and e-commerce applications is availability.
Twenty nine percent of IT professionals agreed that
availability ranks above end user experience and integrations
as the biggest challenge. Because CRM applications are complex
applications that are tightly integrated into other systems,
it is not surprising that 59% of IT experts experience some
kind of performance problem at least once a week. See the “APM
for CRM” infographic for more interesting facts and figures.
Infographic authored by Germain Software LLC. To view the
original post: APM for CRM Infographic.
Microlectures
Microlectures, as defined by the somewhat
reliable Wikipedia, are ~60 second video and
audio instructional modules, designed in a
specific way, for online and mobile learning.
Compare that to our eLearning library, where
each Course Lesson typically is estimated at 5
minutes, not counting the practical assignments that are an
integral part of the content.
(which can take longer of
course).
This kind of very targeted content is probably not for
everyone but there is growing interest both in the commercial
and institutional fields.
If you had to choose some topics that would work in this kind
of environment, what would they be?
Siebel Anniversary Quiz hits
the 1000 Mark!
Thanks to everyone who has taken part so far
in the Siebel 20th Anniversary Quiz! We just
sailed through the 1000 mark (1084 at the
moment) and we are still seeing more players.
It’s free, it’s fun and it is quite a
challenge.
Getting Social With Siebel #7
: Is it ready yet?
In this final post in our little series about selecting a
Social Engagement solution, we come to our last question.
It is probably one of the most important, if not the most
obvious.
Question 8 : Is the solution ready yet?
Of course, I hear you say. It is ready! I have seen the
powerpoints and watched the (same) demo many times. But who is
using it? Are there any companies out there you can talk to?
Does the solution actually feel like a solution or just a
bunch of loosely connected disparate applications? If you are
looking for real integration into embedded processes and
business flows, you might want to ask that question…
Check out the list of Buzzient Features
Ready to get started learning about Buzzient for Social
Engagement?
http://youtu.be/KFoy0pg9zfw
Getting Social With Siebel #6
: User Friendly…or not?
Getting Social with Siebel #6 : Following on from the
previous post, we are looking again at the key questions to
be asking yourself if you are envisaging a Social Engagement
project involving Siebel CRM. Today we look first at a
question that is sometimes (sadly) overlooked. Will your users
have to cope with multiple windows and wildly differing user
interfaces for each component? Will you be able to leverage
the integration in both the UI and the Business Layer? So this
is confusingly Question 7 but Getting Social with Siebel #6.
Question 7 : Can my users seamlessly use the Social Engagement
within the Siebel CRM system?
At Buzzient this is a pretty simple question to answer. Of
course. But is it so easy for other vendors to answer? The
level of integration is usually revelatory in respect of the
depth of Social Engagement, when you are assessing a vendor.
Is this really an integration or just a thin piece of code to
hang a series of different applications together.
Check out the video below showing a typical engagement
interaction. There is also a great click through demo on the
same page.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jOOGOAuwKA