Reference customers slam Siebel - Translated by Marianne Wang
By Jon Panker, News Editor
25 Sep 2002, SearchCRM.com

推荐用户使赛贝尔倍受打击
作者：Jon Panker，新闻编辑
2002年九月25日，SearchDRM.com

In what can only be described as a damning report card on the world's leading CRM vendor, Nucleus Research found that customers of Siebel Systems Inc. are largely dissatisfied and are not achieving a return on their CRM investments. To make matters worse, the findings come from telephone interviews the researcher conducted with reference customers plucked off of Siebel's Web site.

Nucleus调研公司发现赛贝尔系统公司的用户颇为不满，而且其CRM投资没有为他们带来收益，这无疑是世界领先的CRM提供商递交的一份让人失望的成绩单。更糟糕的是，研究人员是与从赛贝尔公司的网站上找到推荐用户，并对他们进行电话采访得到以上结论的。

"Frankly, I'd never put references this bad on my resume," said Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research at Wellesley, Mass.-based Nucleus and author of the report.
Of the 23 Siebel reference customers that agreed to confidential interviews, 61% reported a negative ROI after two years due to challenges with end-user training and customization. Roughly half of the entire pool, however, admitted that they did not have methods in place to measure ROI.

"坦率地说，我永远不会让这么差的推荐人登上我的简历。"位于马萨诸塞州韦尔斯利的Nucleus公司调研副总裁吕贝卡·维特曼说，她是这篇报告的作者。
在23位同意接受私下采访的赛贝尔推荐用户中，61%的用户指出由于终端用户培训和用户化的难度较高，他们使用两年之后未能实现投资收益。但是，大约半数的受访者承认他们没有现成的工具对投资收益做出测量。

Fifty-five percent also said their installations went over budget, and 57% said the installation process took longer than expected.
Customers also complained about the software's cost, which Nucleus estimates is $18,040 per end user per year and runs an average of $6.59 million per implementation.

55%受访者表示，他们的安装费用超出预算， 57%的人表示安装过程比预计的时间要长。
用户还对软件价格颇为不满。据Nucleus估算，每位终端用户每年需要支付的费用为18 040美元，平均实施费用为6 590 000美元。

Over time, most customers were also paying escalating consulting fees to support Siebel applications, according to Nucleus. When contacted by SearchCRM.com, Siebel declined to make an executive available to comment on the findings. Instead, it issued a statement calling the report "statistically insignificant" and emphasizing positive case studies from other analysts.

Nucleus的调查显示，随着时间的推移，为了支持赛贝尔应用软件，多数用户需要支付越来越高的咨询费用。
在SearchCRM.com与赛贝尔接触时，赛贝尔拒绝让其执行官出面对这些调查结果做出解释。恰恰相反，它发布了一篇声明，声称报告的"统计数字没有实际意义"，并对它从其它分析者那里获得的正面的个案研究做了强调。

Nucleus did not ask customers whether they plan to abandon Siebel in favor of other CRM vendors, but the report cannot bode well for San Mateo, Calif.-headquartered industry giant. Latest figures have Siebel owning roughly 45% of the CRM market.
Wettemann said several customers did indicate they had no plans to buy additional software from Siebel or upgrade to Siebel 7, the latest iteration of Siebel's flagship CRM suite.

Nucleus没有询问这些用户是否计划放弃赛贝尔而使用其它CRM提供商的产品，但是这篇报告对这家总部位于加利福尼亚州圣梅多的业界巨子显然十分不利。最近的数字表明，赛贝尔占有CRM市场大约45%的份额。
维特曼说确实有几位用户表示他们不准备购买其它赛贝尔软件或升级到赛贝尔 7，即赛贝尔的旗舰产品CRM套件的最新版本。

More troubling to some may be the apparent contradiction between what these customers told Nucleus and what Siebel reported on its Web site. The customer reference page was pulled from the site after Nucleus issued the report.

对于某些人来说，更加棘手的问题可能在于，这些用户告诉Nucleus的话与赛贝尔在其网站上公布的报告有明显出入。在Nucleus发布报告之后，网站上的用户推荐页被撤掉了。

"Maybe [Siebel] has the same people doing their marketing materials as Enron had doing their numbers," said Wettemann, who added that she spoke with "the happy customers," making one wonder about others.

"也许[赛贝尔]做市场材料的人与在安然做数字的人一样有问题，"维特曼说。她补充说，她曾与"快乐的用户"交谈，交谈的结果让人不禁对其他用户的意见表示怀疑。

Wettemann said some of the problems uncovered could be inherent to the CRM industry, where reports of failed implementations are rampant.
Yet she called Siebel the vendor "poster child" for mistakes. Most companies interviewed expected to deploy CRM quickly with minor tweaking in functionality but later discovered the need to embark on expensive development efforts.

维特曼说他们发现的一些问题可能是CRM产业中的固有问题，在这些方面充斥着大量实施失败的报道。
但是她认为提供商赛贝尔有意掩盖自己的问题。接受采访的多数公司一开始都以为他们能快速应用CRM而不会遇到什么功能性问题，但是后来发现自己不得不在开发工作方面付出昂贵代价。

Nucleus does plan to do similar customer reference checks on other CRM vendors. The original intent of this report wasn't to dig up Siebel dirt, but rather to uncover ROI best practices. The tone of the report changed after talking to customers, Wettemann said.

Nucleus确实计划对其他CRM提供商进行类似的用户推荐检验。该报告本来并非针对赛贝尔，而是要发现实现投资收益的最佳途径。据维特曼说，在与用户进行了交谈之后，报告的基调有所改变。

The report was conducted independently and was not sponsored, according to Nucleus.

据Nucleus称，该报告是独立进行的，没有得到任何赞助。