Denis Pombriant Quotations

Unlimited Edition is a very important development. Companies have had a very fragmented view of business processes; there hasn't been anything that allows them to get a 360 degree view of the customer. Now those using Unlimited Edition can standardize on the same kind of environment for all occasions. They can have integrated processes from one end of the enterprise to the other so that the problem of information silos can begin to abate.

Siebel has provided a consistent vision for the CRM industry for over a decade. With Customer Adaptive Solutions -- and everything they represent -- the company is laying out a new vision for customer facing applications that are more flexible and better able to accommodate customer input. This will enable Siebel users to be more responsive to customers and enable the kind of customer centric processes that drive loyalty and, ultimately, repeat business.

From what I've seen, I think the competitors blew the opportunity. They used it as an opportunity to strut their stuff and say how great they are. It would have been smart for at least one of them to take the high road and do something like offer emergency service using their product for free for example.

It is (a) new platform and a new way to build applications that might not have been conceived before.

Managing sales compensation has always been a difficult task. As products and product configurations continue to get more complex, more and more companies are trying to use incentives as a way to drive specific behaviors. There are so many variables to this that compensation challenges mount to the point where traditional solutions like spreadsheets no longer provide an adequate remedy.

We are only at the beginning of getting the large enterprises involved in this.

There are over 200 nifty new things in this release, but it's not simply about adding features--it's about changing the orientation of the product. You can only go so far in building an SFA engine before you reach diminishing returns. The next logical thing in SFA is to improve inputs into SFA.

There are a lot of vendors out there trying to be cheaper than Salesforce.com or trying to offer more or different features. That is not the best way to compete against a market leader, though. Instead, you have to be offering something that is truly special.

They alluded to that, but we needed much more information.

This is the future. It makes it cheaper and easier for all kinds of companies to build apps, whether you're talking about enterprises or small businesses.

It will provide the same kind of professional test environment that IT has behind the firewall. IT has come to take that for granted.

I can understand building an open-source operating system.