Worth considering if you need a hosted CRM
November 10, 2014

Worth considering if you need a hosted CRM

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

7.7

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle Siebel Enterprise Marketing Suite

Siebel is used for marketing research, analytics, direct mail and email. It is used by a handful of power users and there is a wider group who use it occasionally. The Marketing Suite is primarily used for segmenting large data lists and deploying mailings via an external mailing house or by email. It also provides the main source of marketing/customer analytics for the organization.
  • Very good at creating complex data segments.
  • Provides detailed customer analytics.
  • Very configurable.
  • Version 7.7 (outdated) is very unreliable and regularly crashes. Oracle have said these bugs have been corrected in current version.
  • Implementation cost of upgrade is high so it's easy to get stuck on sub-par older versions.
  • Email marketing function is a long way behind modern web based tools. Processes are cumbersome.
  • Not a very intuitive system and so there is a high training burden.
  • Would benefit from an easy way to offer view only access for dashboards.
  • Facilitated some very complex segmentation for direct mail and email campaigns.
  • Helps to provide the marketing group with detailed campaign tracking.
  • Cumbersome interfaces and lack of reliability in old version have had a negative impact on efficiency.
  • Marketo,Salesforce,Oracle CRM On Demand Marketing
Siebel offers a lot of the same functionality as the major cloud based CRM's. Its flexibility for custom configuration is a definite advantage if you have the resources. Like other enterprise CRM's you need some dedicated staffing to get the most out of the system. As the industry, Oracle included, continue to push to cloud based solutions, Siebel (and some of its competitors) seem a bit under-loved, particularly in terms of user experience. If you are committed to going with a hosted solution and you have a large marketing team with the financial resources to keep yourself on up-to-date versions then Siebel should be considered.
A very conservative data security policy limits the organization to a hosted solution. At particular issue is the tendency of cloud based CRMs to have data centres based in the US, a major issue for Canadian consumers. Once you have integrated a system of this size and complexity, and have the staff resources to utilize it effectively, it's hard to justify a move to an alternative. Consider Siebel if you are a conservatively run organization with a large database of customers and a big marketing team.
If you need a hosted rather than cloud based CRM, Siebel is a consideration. It's best suited to organizations with a large customer database. Given the complexity involved you need at least two full time marketing analysts.The email marketing functionality isn't core to the offering and most organizations would be much better served by cloud based email systems. Siebel offers a very comprehensive feature set and is powerful in the hands of a super user. However, given the costs involved in upgrading a hosted solution I would put serious effort into convincing your decision makers to go for a cloud based CRM instead.