Heard and Overheard

"When I submitted my proposals to upgrade to Siebel 7, I made sure to include the all-important CYA [cover your ***] clause. My boss thought the proposal was a little bit extensive. Then he thought about it and said, 'Consider yourself covered.'" --Ed Garry, vice president of CRM solutions, Quick & Reilly, a FleetBoston financial company "What does mid-market mean? Does it mean the company wants less? No, it does not." --Rohit Bedi, director, product marketing, PeopleSoft "Implementing competitive intelligence is not for the faint of heart. Getting the sales force involved in CI is a huge task. If you guide the sales organization incorrectly, they'll never trust you again." --Arik Johnson, founder and managing director, Aurora WDC "The only competitor we take seriously is Siebel [Systems]." --Jim Steele, president of worldwide operations, Salesforce.com "VoIP will be an important factor in the call center of the future." --Charlie Rabie, vice president of products, Aspect Communications "The market is not interested in generic CRM anymore." --Dan Ford, general manager, product marketing, Siebel Communications and Media, Siebel Systems