Siebel Scores Big in Gartner's Slew of Market Reports

Last week Gartner announced the results of its latest Magic Quadrant and its first "MarketScope" reports for CRM vendors at its Gartner CRM Summit Spring 2004 in Baltimore. The report works much like Gartner's Magic Quadrant with regard to leader positioning, however, the main difference is that vendors in MarketScope are scored individually, not ranked against each other, as they are in the Magic Quadrant. This enables Gartner analysts to update each vendor's ratings throughout the year. This is especially useful for emerging markets as new vendor information becomes available. "We like that we can update a MarketScope for an individual vendor without repositioning everyone," says Joe Galvin, vice president and research director at Gartner CRM. Galvin specializes in SFA. Vendors are placed into one of five categories: strong negative, caution, promising, positive, and strong positive. Each vendor is rated on product functionality, viability, vision, direction, and client base. "Siebel was the only one rated positive. A number of companies were rated as promising," Galvin says, adding that both MarketScope and Magic Quadrant reports should be used as tools in conjunction with consultation from a Gartner analyst. Siebel mirrors the success of "The Lord of the Rings," as it has been placed in the "Leader" quadrant in all five published 2004 CRM Magic Quadrants, and has achieved "strong positive" or "positive" ratings in six CRM MarketScope reports for the first half of 2004, including the highest rating, of positive, in "MarketScope: Direct Sales Technologies, 1H04" report. Commenting on the significance of the MarketScope reports, Jeff Pulver, Siebel's vice president of worldwide marketing, says, "They're all very important. Direct Sales Technologies is important. It's our heritage. It's where we started." Siebel was also the stand-alone leader in the CRM Sales Suites Magic Quadrant category; with Oracle and SAP as challengers; no visionaries; and Onyx, PeopleSoft, and Pivotal listed as niche players. CRM success has been largely sporadic among customer companies. "There are some organizations that are kicking it and some that are getting kicked by it," Galvin says. "Some [companies] mistakenly bought a broad suite of products and failed to align them with their business processes. The successful companies today are already in the optimization and upgrade stage." Whether first integrating or upgrading their CRM systems, Galvin says more companies are investing in CRM solutions. "There is a sense of people reengaging in CRM to drive their business. We've been in a cost cutting environment for so long that strategic investments in IT have been curtailed. Now people are asking, 'How do we increase close rates and improve effectiveness of sales people?' To drive growth you have to make investments." More specifically, Galvin says he's seeing an increasing demand in CRM with a greater understanding of risk deployment: "We're seeing [customer] companies with a more phased approach [to CRM implementations], vendors with more vertically focused solutions and greater degrees of process [or business workflow] capabilities."