Siebel Continues to Lead Enterprise Deployment

Siebel Systems still represents four of every 10 enterprise-level CRM implementation projects completed by large consultancies like Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, and IBM BCS, according to a recent Gartner report. "The CRM Applications That Consultants and Systems Integrators Deploy Most" researched from the beginning of 2003 until the end of 2004 approximately 500 such projects by the largest consultancies within the United States. Siebel continues to dominate the number of projects implemented at 38 percent, nearly four times more often than either of its nearest rivals, SAP and Oracle, which both ranked second at 10 percent. The end result is, there are three to four times as many Siebel resources as alternatives in the large consultants, according to Ed Thompson, vice president and research director of CRM at Gartner. Still, the number was slightly down when compared to the 2002 to 2003 time frame, when Siebel was cited on 45 percent of projects. "We're projecting Siebel's fall will continue since the number of projects implemented generally follow the license sales, which are dropping," Thompson says. Meanwhile, Oracle and SAP continue to hover around the 10 percent mark, though they did increase by 1 percentage point since the last report. "That's surprising, given the fact that SAP is outselling Siebel, which shows that not many [SAP] projects are going live in comparison to Siebel, where people tend to buy stuff and do something with it," Thompson says. "That said, both SAP and Oracle increased and we continue to see their license sales increase, especially with SAP. We expect the gap between them and Siebel to continue to close very slowly over the coming years." Epiphany ranked third at 7 percent of all consultant implementation projects, but "now that they've been acquired [by SSA], that's obviously going to change the game yet again," Thompson says. PeopleSoft ranked fourth at 4 percent, Amdocs fifth at 2 percent, and Microsoft CRM ranked sixth, tied with KANA and Chordiant at 1 percent. While Salesforce.com had zero percent, Thompson maintains the company is one to watch. "Though they were zero, that could change two years from now. If you look at the number of multimillion-dollar deals they did in the last quarter, it was about 10. Siebel did approximately 20. Salesforce.com is getting into the big time," he says. "In addition, we found that Oracle's average deal size in CRM implementations is rather small, at only a few hundred-thousand dollars per deal." As for the areas in which consultants are investing the most resources, Siebel also continues to lead, with three to four times as many as its competitors. But yet again, there are indicators of future change. "SAP skills are booked out. Nobody is sitting them on the bench, which is very different from a few years ago," Thompson says. "That means SAP projects are starting to go live, especially in the U.S. While they're still not on the same scale as Siebel, they're starting to crank it up." Related articles: Siebel Top Forrester's Wave for Enterprise CRM Oracle Reports Strong Q4 Results