Siebel Increases Presence in EIM and Hosted CRM Markets

Siebel Systems' recent acquisitions of UpShot Corp, a provider of Internet-based hosted CRM services, and enterprise incentive management provider Motiva, Inc. are part of the CRM giant's overall growth strategy.

As part of the growth strategy, according to Hughes, Siebel is also moving quickly to optimize its internal processes in order to be able to "go to market more efficiently" and has strengthened many relationships with systems integrators.

"We are very bullish on growing this company aggressively," Hughes says. "Both of these acquisitions fit into our overall plan."

Specifically UpShot, currently with over 1,000 customers, will be integrated into Siebel CRM OnDemand, a hosted CRM offering that was jointly announced earlier this month with IBM. "This acquisition brings together the number one technology platform provider in IBM, a leader in CRM hosting with UpShot and the number one CRM provider in Siebel," Hughes says. "The hosted CRM market is perfect for independent asset managers or non-captive agents" who do not have the resources to host their own CRM applications.

On the enterprise incentive management (EIM) front, Siebel's acquisition of Motiva allows Siebel to better round out its incentive compensation offering in order to meet the demand for incentive management technology, according to Hughes. Gartner Group estimated the EIM market was one of the few technology sectors to grow in 2002, and a recent Giga Information Group study predicted that the sector will continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 40 percent through 2005.

"Motiva will enhance our ability to provide EIM to our customers," he says, adding that Motiva's technology will be integrated with Siebel Incentive Compensation offering. The integrated product should be available by the fourth quarter of this year. "In many cases, the error rate when it comes to incentives is as high as 10 percent," resulting in millions of dollars of misplaced incentives at large insurance companies, points out Hughes.

The incorporation of Motiva's services-processing architecture will enable users of Siebel Incentive Compensation to handle a much broader variety of compensation plans with greater flexibility and increased performance, according to Hughes. These enhancements will allow users to better address the variety of compensation approaches that can differ considerably by industry and line of business.

Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio