It is depressing how frequently we find companies who are almost on the verge of giving up on Siebel - not through any fault of the product but due to the frighteningly bad implementation advice they have received. Often, these situations can be quickly turned around.

In one particular scenario, a company had gone live with a configuration that could not consistently take orders in their call centre, despatch those orders or collect payment for orders they had despatched. The customer service and revenue implications are easy to imagine.

We took a three phase approach:

• First, we implemented a series of fixes that removed the grossest errors and, in particular, enabled all payments to be collected. This was completed in about 15 days.

• Second, we undertook a short business analysis exercise that defined exactly what the system ought to do. The emphasis here is on short because action (albeit considered action), not introspection, was required. In parallel, we built a prototype that showed the customer that we really did understand their requirement and that the product was capable of meeting that requirement.

• Finally, we re-built the system so that it functioned properly – and we did this for less than 25% of the cost that the customer had been originally billed for the failing configuration!