Slovak Telecom Accelerates Service Delivery by More than 80 Percent Us

    Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

    SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 5, 2005--Siebel Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:SEBL), the leading provider of customer-facing solutions, today announced that Slovak Telecom has accelerated service delivery by 83 percent using Siebel Communications. With strategy and implementation services provided by Accenture (NYSE:ACN), Slovakia's leading wireline communications carrier deployed Siebel Systems' communications-specific customer relationship management (CRM) solution to 1,500 staff to create a single, comprehensive customer view and target these customers with complementary fixed-line services. The project has lowered the average period between a service order and service availability from forty days to seven days. The average number of days outstanding for invoices has been reduced from six months to 30 days, and the percentage of abandoned calls has been reduced from 40 percent to 5 percent.
    "Siebel Communications is the foundation for our multichannel customer care, service provisioning, and billing system," says Jeroen Hollestelle, Vice President of Customer Care, Slovak Telecom. "When a customer contacts us to order a new product, inquire about an existing service being delivered, or inquire about a bill, the customer can either call or visit one of the retail branches. With this comprehensive view of each customer, we have been able to increase our competitiveness through reduced customer churn and increased customer satisfaction. Siebel Communications has transformed Slovak Telecom into an agile, customer-focused wireline business."
    No longer a state-owned monopoly, Slovak Telecom has evolved to focus on improving the experiences of its 1.2 million customers. Previously, when a customer ordered a telephone service, there was no indication of whether the customer would even receive the service, let alone how quickly it would be installed. The company was split into 38 geographic regions, and a reliance on 32 regional customer systems and four billing systems meant there was no integrated view of the organization, minimal understanding of who the customers were, and little insight into which products were being used by which customers.
    Working closely with Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company, Slovak Telecom deployed Siebel Communications to 1,500 staff to create a next-generation customer care and billing system geared to maximize sales effectiveness, increase customer satisfaction, and optimize productivity. In doing so, Slovak Telecom benefited from the rapid delivery capabilities of the CRM offerings within Accenture Communication Solutions, a comprehensive suite of industry-leading communications solutions that are enhanced with each client implementation. As a result, Accenture, a Siebel Global Strategic Partner, was able to migrate Slovak Telecom's first 60,000 customers within 12 weeks of starting the program to the Siebel Communications product and the integrated Geneva billing system. Today, up to 1,500 staff in the call centers and retail branches use Siebel Communications to gain a single, comprehensive view of the customer.
    Slovak Telecom's outbound telesales agents and field sales professionals are using Siebel Communications to increase product use, penetration, and the average product holding per customer. Siebel Communications also enables the company to segment and target customers for outbound campaigns. Prequalified customers are then targeted with compelling wireline solutions. This enhanced business process has resulted in dramatic sales increases. During one campaign for an optional call plan, telesales agents closed up to ten deals per agent per day, equivalent to 5,500 new contracts.
    Siebel Systems pioneered the industry-specific application model to help ensure that organizations of all sizes, across a variety of industries, achieve demonstrable business value from their CRM solutions. Today, Siebel Systems delivers 23 industry applications, including Siebel Communications, enabling companies to establish a single, enterprise-wide view of their customers and execute key customer-facing business processes more effectively and efficiently. Specifically, Siebel Communications enables telecommunications service providers to offer customers more specialized services to meet evolving needs, including built-in support for customer self-service; effective integration support for existing systems; and multiple account and billing hierarchies to better manage fraud, credit, agreements, provisioning, and work orders. For more information about Siebel Communications, please visit www.siebel.com/communications.

    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. Shabana Khan, 650-477-1180 shabana.khan@siebel.com

KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA INTERNATIONAL EUROPE INDUSTRY KEYWORD: HARDWARE TELECOMMUNICATIONS SOFTWARE PRODUCT SOURCE: Siebel Systems, Inc.

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