ELDIM Increases Customer Satisfaction and Productivity by 30 Percent i

    Business Editors/High-Tech Editors

    BARCELONA, Spain--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 18, 2005--

    Unified Customer View Enables French Manufacturer of Specialist
    Inspection Systems to Transform Quality of After-Sales Service

    Siebel Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SEBL), the leading provider of customer-facing solutions, today announced that ELDIM has increased customer satisfaction and productivity by 30 percent in two years using Siebel CRM Professional Edition. This specialist manufacturer of cameras and inspection systems deployed Siebel CRM Professional Edition in just 30 days to create a single, complete view of its customers across multiple channels. The strategy also enabled the company to reduce the time it takes to generate reports from four hours to ten minutes and virtually eliminate customer complaints concerning after-sales service.
    "Siebel CRM Professional Edition offers all the sales, marketing, and service resources we need to effectively manage customer relationships. We can add functionality easily, and Siebel CRM Professional Edition delivers overall great value for the price," said Vincent Leroux, After-Sales and IT Director, ELDIM. "Others told us it would take six weeks just to customize their CRM software to fit our needs, whereas Siebel CRM Professional Edition was ready to use from day one, with no customization. We used the CRM system right out of the box and went live within one month."
    French company ELDIM is a manufacturer of cooled digital cameras, video photometers, colorimeters, and inspection systems. These systems are used by flat panel display, communications, and scientific companies worldwide as part of their R&D and manufacturing quality control processes. ELDIM's after-sales support team is responsible for responding to technical inquiries about its complex products and ensuring that the products operate accurately around the clock.
    Until now, ELDIM's after-sales support team relied on informal, disconnected processes and procedures to manage customer inquiries. The team used a combination of spreadsheets, email, telephone calls, and separate customer databases to field the questions, track them to resolution, and maintain contact with customers. A proliferating customer base, overseas expansion, and a growing product portfolio made it increasingly difficult to manage customer questions using these techniques. ELDIM had only a fragmented view of each customer's profile, the products the customer had chosen, and the environment in which the customer operated. This undermined the company's ability to quickly and effectively resolve the growing number of inquiries received.
    By taking advantage of Siebel CRM Professional Edition's rich, prepackaged CRM functionality, ELDIM deployed the application in only one month at its French call center to create a single, comprehensive view of every customer across multiple channels. Siebel CRM Professional Edition provides a unified view of each customer's profile, details about the products customers are using, the type of process being used, and the history of all previous inquiries. This enables ELDIM's after-sales support team to respond quickly and accurately to the 200 multichannel inquiries received every month.
    ELDIM has experienced a 30 percent increase in customer satisfaction in the two years since it deployed Siebel CRM Professional Edition. The company can now respond faster with improved accuracy and more detailed responses. This improved service experience has also enabled the company to eliminate complaints concerning after-sales service.
    In addition, ELDIM has increased the productivity of its staff with the Siebel solution. The company estimates its support team is 30 percent more efficient than it was prior to introducing Siebel CRM Professional Edition. Whenever a support engineer was asked to provide a report on a customer, it used to take an average of four hours to complete, because engineers had to wade through numerous emails, spreadsheets, and other databases. Siebel CRM Professional Edition now provides all the information a support engineers' needs in one easy-to-use location and enables the creation of reports in minutes.
    ELDIM's sales and marketing effectiveness has also increased with its use of Siebel CRM Professional Edition. The team uses the solution to track sales opportunities, create quotes, manage orders, and view all activities and contacts. The marketing department also uses it for campaign management. Whenever a new marketing campaign is devised, Siebel CRM Professional Edition is used to generate target prospect lists, prepare letters, and track responses.

    About Siebel CRM Professional Edition

    Siebel CRM Professional Edition is Siebel Systems' on premise sales, marketing, and service solution for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that prefer to maintain control of their hardware and applications on-site. With best-in-class CRM functionality provided in easy-to-deploy modules, Siebel CRM Professional Edition provides highly configurable, extended CRM functionality through its powerful customization and integration tools, enabling organizations to choose the specific CRM capabilities they need to run their business. Moreover, with its unique, extensible design, Siebel CRM Professional Edition can be adapted and expanded with additional modules to meet an organization's growing needs. In addition, the product offers a seamless migration path to Siebel enterprise applications and can be deployed in conjunction with Siebel CRM OnDemand, providing SMBs with multiple ways to deliver world-class CRM functionality. To learn more about Siebel CRM Professional Edition, please visit http://www.siebel.com/smb/solutions.shtm.

    About Siebel Systems

    Siebel Systems is the world's leading provider of customer-facing solutions that deliver demonstrable business results and long-term competitive advantage. Siebel's multichannel offerings allow organizations to intelligently manage and coordinate all customer interactions across the Web, contact center, field sales/service force, branch/retail network, and indirect and partner distribution channels. Siebel solutions draw upon the company's best-in-class capabilities in customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence, and customer data integration and can be deployed as licensed software or as a hosted service. Siebel solutions are tailored to the unique needs of 23 industries and incorporate industry-specific business processes, best practices, and business insight. They are the product of more than $2 billion in R&D investments and reflect over 11 years of experience with more than 4,000 organizations. Together with its extensive global network of alliance partners, Siebel provides the people, process, and technology expertise critical in driving business value from the deployment of customer-facing solutions. Over 3 million users worldwide in organizations of all sizes depend on Siebel solutions to deliver dramatic improvements in how they identify, acquire, retain, and serve customers. For more information, visit www.siebel.com.

    For more information on Siebel Systems solutions and services, please visit our Web site: CRM -- http://www.siebel.com/crm; OnDemand Solutions -- http://www.crmondemand.com; Industry CRM -- http://www.siebel.com/industry-crm; Call Center and Service -- http://www.siebel.com/call-center; Sales Force Automation -- http://www.siebel.com/sales-force-automation; Marketing Automation -- http://www.siebel.com/marketing-automation; Business Intelligence -- http://www.siebel.com/business-intelligence; Integration Solutions -- http://www.siebel.com/integration-solutions; CRM Services -- http://www.siebel.com/crm-services.

    Except for the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risk or uncertainties. Future operating results of Siebel Systems may differ from the results discussed or forecasted in the forward-looking statements due to factors that include, but are not limited to, risks associated with customer relations, such as the availability of Siebel Systems' products and services, customer implementation of products and services, relationships with customers, third-party vendors and systems integrators, concentration of revenues in a relatively small number of customers, existence of errors or defects in products, ability to successfully manage growth, significant current and expected additional competition and the need to continue to expand product distribution and services offerings. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of Siebel Systems are included in Siebel Systems' Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available at www.sec.gov. Siebel Systems assumes no obligation to update the information in this press release.

    Siebel is a trademark of Siebel Systems, Inc. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. All other product and company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned for identification purposes only.

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CONTACT: Siebel Systems, Inc. Cecilia Denny, 650-477-5861 cecilia.denny@siebel.com

KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA FRANCE SPAIN INTERNATIONAL EUROPE INDUSTRY KEYWORD: HARDWARE ADVERTISING/MARKETING SOFTWARE PRODUCT SOURCE: Siebel Systems, Inc.

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