What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution to get an almost 360-degree view of a customer. If you can see a customer, you can have a view of all the technical assets which the customer has. We use product subscriptions and subscription management right from onboarding a product to a customer's account, all the way through to upgrading or downgrading that product and, of course, termination.
We also use it for customer interaction management. When a customer places a call to the call center, we use Siebel to review their history and see how you can support the customer in terms of any query your customer has.
What is most valuable?
The solution's order management pack is quite fantastic.
Customer and accounts management as well as subscription management are all great aspects of the solution.
What needs improvement?
The solution itself is very heavy.
If Oracle can provide a better cloud version, they could provide a cloud dated version that can be deployed on a microservice.
There needs to be a way to move things in and out of the cloud, and the solution shouldn't just run on an Oracle cloud either. they need to also ensure users can use any cloud provider, including AWS, Azure, Google, etc.
The most important thing they need to do is offer cloud-native support. A lot of benefits that come with the cloud-native implementation can be realized.
The solution needs to auto-scale and offer horizontal scaling.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for over a decade. It's been 11 years or so now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution has quite a complex set up, however, once it stabilizes, it becomes very reliable. There is no frequent downtime, though it's tightly coupled to the database so if the Siebel database does experience some degradation, it will impact the performance of the application.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have a lot of users. In the call center, we have about 2,000 agents logged into the solution. At our peak, we have over 2,500 users on it.
We really use it extensively every day. We don't have plans to increase usage, however, maybe in the future we will upgrade to a more cloud native version.
How are customer service and technical support?
The solution's technical support has been impressive. Whenever we request support from Oracle, in terms of whether the features raised are in demand, etc., they are very responsive and knowledgeable. Even though they just upgrade products, they really assist us when we need it.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is not straightforward. It was complex, at least when we originally implemented it.
What other advice do I have?
We're just an Oracle customer.
I'd advise organizations considering the solution to get the right partner to implement the Oracle Siebel CRM for them. The partner will be even more essential if the company decides to go for a cloud-native version of Siebel CRM.
I would rate them seven out of ten overall.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.