What attracted you to head Siebel's Global Services Organization?

McPartland: I joined Siebel Systems as a result of a shared vision with our new CEO. What Siebel Systems executives learned during the past ten years is that successfully deploying front office solutions requires more than technology. It involves the intersection of people, processes and technology. We must address these areas in order for customers to achieve measurable business outcomes. Accordingly, when Mike Lawrie appointed me into this role he asked me to both reshape Siebel Systems' Global Services organization and work very closely with our ecosystem of partners to ensure that, together, we drive positive business value for customers.

What past experiences will you be able to draw upon in your new role?

McPartland: My experience with SAP is very relevant. Growing the services business profitably while maintaining the partner ecosystem was critical. Creating meaningful careers for our associates and changing the implementation approach with programs like Accelerated SAP was key. It always comes back to the same critical success factor - the customer. The idea is to start with the customer and their desired outcome. Figure out how to help them succeed and consider your employees and partner in the process. Success will result for all.

Do you think all the bad news about Siebel Systems is justified?

McPartland: I tend to focus on the positive. As you know, we met analyst expectations and had another cash positive and profitable quarter in Q3 2004. Gartner recently announced that Siebel Systems leads the market by a significant margin in a key measure of CRM success: the number of CRM seats deployed. We hosted more than 3,000 customers at our User Week event in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, where we introduced a significant expansion of our business analytics application capabilities with new customer, finance, supply chain and workforce analytic applications. And we're poised to unveil the industry's first hosted CRM offerings tailored for vertical markets, which further builds on our leadership in pioneering industry-specific CRM.

How is the Siebel Systems' business ecology an asset to your organization? Or is it really a liability?

McPartland: Without a doubt the Siebel Systems partner ecosystem is an asset to Global Services, and most importantly our customers. Our partners bring invaluable skills, services and knowledge to our users and they are a key part of our success. I believe the most successful projects result when the customer can retain ownership and the partner and Siebel both have meaningful and accountable roles.

What can Siebel Systems' customers expect differently from Global Services?

McPartland: Today, our customers associate us with having strong competencies in defining the requirements for and delivering CRM technology solutions. Although our service offerings already extend beyond these areas, in the coming months customers can expect that Siebel Systems and its partner ecosystem to unveil and deliver a much broader services blueprint to address the people, process and technology requirements for successful front office deployments. We believe there is a six step process that organizations must follow within these areas in order to deliver measurable business results. Organizations must:

• Understanding the business need
• Stating a clear strategy and business outcome
• Defining and designing the solution
• Delivering the solution
• Confirming the business outcomes
• Optimizing the business outcomes

Next year, customers will see a wide range of offerings from Siebel and its partners that adhere to this six-step process. In fact, Siebel expects to introduce a pilot program in the first quarter of 2005.

Siebel Sales is enabling Medienhaus, one of Austria's leading media and communications organizations,to close 40% more sales compared with traditional sales techniques. The company's media portfolio includes a range of subscription-based publications, newspapers and local radio stations. Under its "Teleport" brand, the company also offers customers local fixed-line telephone services, Internet service provision, and portal services. By unifying customer information across multiple lines of business, this leading Austrian publishing and communications company is effectively cross-selling and up-selling that complement each other.

"Medienhaus has concluded that it is up to ten times cheaper to cross-sell services to customers using telemarketing than it is to contact them using traditional direct marketing or door-to-door selling," said Arno Breuss, Chief Financial Officer, Teleport.

The company has also reduced the number of complaints from priority customers by 50% in 12 months.

During last month's User Week, C3i, demonstrated how it has embedded Siebel Field Service and Siebel Analytics in their services to provide mobile professionals with actionable business intelligence. C3i customers in turn use the information to improve the performance and productivity of their clients. C3i was able to showcase its latest help desk based end-user support and solutions at the annual event.

"As a Consulting Partner for over six years, C3i collaborates with Siebel to deliver the highest quality CRM and analytics implementation and ongoing support services," commented Joel Morse, CEO of C3i.

Concord Communications' (Nasdaq: CCRD) Business Service Management (BSM) software and Siebel 7 and 7.5 has been validated. Concord is currently working toward validation on Siebel 7.7.

Concord's eHealth Suite for Siebel business applications maps business processes to the IT infrastructure, measures the actual end-user experience, and manages the applications, systems and networks that end users rely on to do their jobs. While the Siebel Service Analytics application rates the performance of users and call center agents, the eHealth Suite tracks how well the Siebel business applications, systems, and networks support those users.

Dayton Semerjian, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Strategic Alliances for Concord Communications, said, "Partnering with Siebel Systems supports our vision to provide large enterprises and service providers with a single, comprehensive view of their business services."

Spoke Software announced an agreement to become a software partner with the Siebel Alliance Program so that Spoke's social networking software will better integrate with Siebel business applications.

Spoke provides Relationship Capital Management solutions and enterprise-class professional relationship applications. The agreement serves to give sales professionals who use Siebel business applications simultaneous access to Spoke's enterprise relationship networking capabilities.

"Companies are looking to improve the effectiveness of their sales forces by adding technology that helps their salespeople," said Andy Halliday, VP of Business Development at Spoke Software. "This alliance will link employee relationship networks and connect them to Spoke's 20+ million person relationship network. The result is that all company business units will be able to target accounts."

Ultimately, joint customers will be able to increase sales productivity, access new accounts and streamline communication. Spoke will submit its Relationship Management Solution for validation in Q4 of 2004.