IBM Ups CRM Push; Offers Siebel Global Services, Consulting

Computergram International, August 13, 1999

Following its partnership with leading supply chain vendor i2 Technology Inc last week, IBM Global Services (IGS) yesterday turned its focus to the customer relationship management market by announcing a strategic alliance with Siebel Systems Inc to offer service and consulting for Siebel's front office software worldwide. Having got the ERP market tied up, Big Blue is now working to get all the leading SCM and CRM vendors on its platform too. As reported yesterday, IBM realizes that all its ERP partners are fast getting into the supply chain and CRM markets and has combined its ERP/SCM units into one division to capitalize on those alliances.

Given its strategy, you'd be forgiven for thinking it should be IBM's newly-formed CRM division making yesterday's announcement, which is effectively the company's first global agreement with a CRM vendor. Instead, it came out of Big Blue's global services division. One spokesperson for the server group, which also has its own dealings with Siebel, explained that as the CRM division was so new that it would take a while for it to formulate its own strategy, and in the meantime that didn't stop other IBM divisions from partnering with front office vendors like Siebel. The whole purpose of the new division he said, was to have one unit that dealt with CRM across the whole of IBM as opposed to individual units reinventing the wheel each time. But a spokesperson for the CRM division didn't seem so sure: "We can't say it [the alliance] will necessarily be backed under the new CRM division."

Apparent strategy confusion aside, IBM now offers global services and consulting for Siebel's front office software on both its Netfinity and RS6000 platforms - running IBM's DB2 - as well as on other vendors' platforms. The DB2 announcement was made in June when the two companies entered into a joint development, marketing and sales agreement to deliver out-of-the-box integration between Siebel's applications and IBM's DB2 Universal database. Under yesterday's deal, IGS has also become a Siebel strategic alliance partner and IGS said it is establishing a worldwide team within its CRM services practice (itself between 600 and 700 consultants and integrators strong) to specifically deal with Siebel customers. The team will be headed up by IBM's Jeff Halverson, who will be relocated from Illinois to San Mateo, California to enable the two to work more closely together.

IBM said it will also be opening solution centers dedicated to Siebel in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific and has committed to training 200 consultants on the front office vendor's software. The spokesperson for IGS said it also had partnerships with the other leading CRM vendors, Vantive Corp and Clarify Inc, although the relationships weren't as strategic as the one announced with Siebel, which IBM considers to be the number one vendor. IGS doesn't have equivalent solution centers for either Vantive or Clarify for example.

Siebel said the announcement was a further extension of the two companies' existing relationship and marked the first serious vendor-based consulting alliance the CRM vendor has formed. The fact that IBM is dedicating a team, a VP and 200 consultants to Siebel underlines how important and strategic the alliance is. It said that it will also co-operate with IBM within its e-business solution centers.