It is always worth commending companies that are truthful in their advertising. Which is why Jyoti Banerjee is disappointed that Siebel's rather truthful advertisement is also an own goal.
Ad hoardings around Heathrow are currently featuring a message from CRM vendor Siebel on the lines of "Big CRM solutions for small companies." It is not surprising that Siebel has joined the gang of enterprise application vendors keen to sell their wares to small and mid-sized businesses. After all, the number of enterprise organisations that have not already succumbed to the siren-call of a CRM solution is a tiny one. Growth prospects in that market are not great. However, there seem to be millions of SMEs, most of whom would not know how to spell CRM let alone own one - surely, the argument goes, they are ripe for purchasing the stuff.
I don't question that argument at all.
What I struggle with is the idea that any SME might be remotely interested in what Siebel calls, with disarming honesty, a Big CRM solution. What customer after enterprise customer has proved is that Siebel's big CRM solution is big on all sort of fronts: money, big-money consultants, people to install it, people to train your users on it, etc, etc. Even some companies with deep pockets have found that they were not prepared for the cost and expense.
