Selecting the product

Our customer needed to deliver interactive reporting to their high-level business users, and had considered many tools. They selected Siebel Analytics (now known as Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition) because it offered them the ability to map complex technical structures into meaningful business terms and to deliver clean, clear, timely reports – together with close integration to their existing Siebel application.

Employing resources

Our customer had a good level of in-house skill, but knew this had limitations with this particular technology. Siebel Analytics is very powerful but can easily become very complex when dealing with extensive customisation requirements. Customer Systems had worked with this customer for a number of years, successfully delivering a wide range of services including upgrades, training and support - so it was natural for them to turn to us for crucial help in this project.

Deploying the product

The key to success was our ability to keep any customisation as slender as possible. Our exhaustive familiarity with the default functionality of the out-of-the-box Siebel Analytics application meant that we were able to greatly reduce the amount of customisation required. Through extensive experience with the product, our consultants know where and when to make small changes in order to have a big impact. They are experts at working with the existing structure of the application rather than fighting against it.

As well as delivering the reports and analysis needed by the organisation, we were also able to tailor the presentation environment to the specific users who would need to use it. We integrated the Siebel Analytics application into existing intranet portals and provided tools for exporting reports to external applications such as Excel. This led to enthusiastic take-up throughout the organisation, and in particular from the upper levels of management.

Success

Because of its keen adoption at the management level, the Siebel Analytics project quickly gained currency. The fact that managers were coming to rely on the reports they were generating with Siebel Analytics meant that they were also becoming dependent on the data held in Siebel. In turn, this has increased management buy-in to the Siebel project, and has pushed up the importance of CRM within the organisation. As a result, Siebel Analytics has become a key driver for CRM strategy.