Siebel 7 Call Center. (Technology Highlights).

As Siebel has been building CRM software for nearly a decade, one would expect they have observed trends in CRM over that time. According to Matt Malden, senior director of product marketing for Siebel's Call Center Web Services products, they have seen a "trend in consolidation of information and consistency of information across all channels." Drawing on its vast customer base, Siebel worked with more than 70 data customers on the Web/client application, the Siebel Smart Web Client, which in Siebel 7 uses Dynamic HTML (a combination of HTML, JavaScript and Document Object Model [DOM]). The DOM allows individual elements on an HTML page to be programmarically manipulated without refreshing the entire page from the server, thus speeding up the rate at which information is delivered to the user, helping to alleviate what Malden called "the challenge to keep CRSs productive," and also reducing the amount of bandwidth needed for each transaction.

The Siebel Smart Web Client also provides the ability to drag-and-drop elements on the page, to select rows and fields within an element, to selectively update portions of the page based on data changes, to have smart controls that support auto-complete, and to automatically save information.

Siebcl Call Centcr 7 includes service capabilities for service request management, problem resolution, quality management and contract management. Sales capabilities include opportunity and pipeline management, campaign management, account management, contact management, order entry, time management, marketing collateral, product configuration, quote generation, proposals and presentations, and sales forecasting. Among the management tools included are Siebel Smart Reports and the Siebel Executive Information System, Siebel Data Quality and Siebel Service Analysis, which provide means to measure and analyze performance. Siebel Remote provides tools for the exchange and synchronization of data for remote workers through laptops, PDAs and other mobile devices.

Also included with Siebel Call Center 7 are CTI integration, e-mail response management integration, VoIP, Web browser and application sharing, fax and paging integration, global support (Siebel 7 ships in 20 languages), and universal queuing. The Persistent Agent Dashboard keeps key customer information in front of the agent throughout a transaction and a consolidated search center allows agents to search for information no matter where it resides in the system.

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