SEBL Siebel Systems (MM)

Siebel Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:SEBL), a leading provider of customer-facing solutions, today announced that Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais (SNCF) -- the French state-owned railway company -- is gaining significant business value from Siebel solutions and its implementation by Accenture. With Siebel Business Analytics, Siebel Call Center, Siebel Marketing, and Siebel Loyalty Management, SNCF anticipates up to a 25 percent revenue increase in the customer loyalty segment. The company's new subsidiary, CRMServices, has used Siebel Systems to provide a critical link between loyalty and marketing, and will potentially reach 3 to 5 million customers through targeted promotions. "This project is critical to our ongoing success as a leading European land transportation organization," said Sylvie Latour, CEO of CRMServices, SNCF. "We are redoubling our efforts to improve customer satisfaction and we recognize that Siebel's best-of-breed technology will enable us to do this." SNCF is one of the key players in Europe's vast and sophisticated land transportation network. Each year, the company manages more than 16 million passengers and 135 million tons of freight. The company's annual revenues are greater than $5 billion. In the highly competitive European transportation sector, customers typically have many options when traveling from point A to point B. The growing presence of air travel Internet sites and the rise of low-cost air carriers, in particular, pose a significant threat to the market share of traditional rail carriers. In its ongoing efforts to become a high-performance business, SNCF wanted to build on its record of customer service success. One way to do this involved joining the S'Miles multibrand loyalty program, which includes other French-based companies such as Galeries Lafayette and Casino. Under this program, SNCF's top customers received loyalty rewards once they provided identifying information about themselves. For the first time, SNCF had customer data that provided insights into the specific travel and purchase behaviors of its most valuable customers. By expanding and reengineering its loyalty program, the company believed it would be able to gain valuable insights of a much broader base of customers. This knowledge could, in turn, be used to design more targeted marketing and sales promotions for many more customer segments. With Accenture's help, SNCF has developed a dedicated capability to build loyalty and create marketing campaigns for its most valued customers. According to Latour, "Our new subsidiary, CRMServices, provides a critical link between loyalty and marketing and is on track to not only help SNCF generate significant savings, but also to reach 3 to 5 million customers through targeted promotions. With a keen focus on marketing and customer strategy, the Accenture team is enabling us to better target its key clients while optimizing pricing." SNCF selected Siebel's Loyalty Management solution because it delivers a 360-degree view of customer behavior across all channels and customer touchpoints. As a result, SNCF can better understand each customer's lifetime value and tailor service levels and promotions accordingly. In addition, Siebel Loyalty Management enables SNCF's business users to quickly and easily modify loyalty programs on an ongoing basis, without the help of internal IT resources. The implementation of the first two solution modules -- Siebel Loyalty Management and Siebel Call Center -- was completed in just seven months. The remaining modules were deployed one month later. The success of this project is due, in a large part, to Accenture's keen ability to marshal resources to meet SNCF's ambitious business objectives. According to Cyril Garnier, CIO of CRMServices, "We selected the Accenture/Siebel proposal because it was innovative, flexible, and simple, with a single solution for the entire domain, from loyalty program management to data mining and call centers. Accenture's experience in customer relationship management and the company's record in maximizing marketing return on investment were key to our decision." Siebel Customer Adaptive Solutions, which encompass all Siebel product and service offerings, including the Siebel CRM solutions, enable organizations to better understand and adapt to the needs of their customers in response to rapidly changing business requirements. Companies embracing Siebel Customer Adaptive Solutions will be able to more effectively and quickly anticipate customer needs, realign their customer-facing business processes for systemic and consistent improvement, and direct the right actions across their business to maximize customer satisfaction and profitability. For more information, please visit www.siebel.com. About Accenture Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture collaborates with its clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With deep industry and business process expertise, broad global resources, and a proven track record, Accenture can mobilize the right people, skills, and technologies to help clients improve their performance. With more than 123,000 people in 48 countries, the company generated net revenues of US $15.55 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2005. Its home page is www.accenture.com. About Siebel Systems Siebel Systems is a leading provider of software solutions and services that drive value and loyalty in client-customer relationships, providing best-in-class capabilities in on premise and hosted customer relationship management (CRM), business analytics, and customer data integration. Siebel's new Customer Adaptive Solutions enable organizations to model their customer-centric business processes in order to drive the most effective customer interactions, gain increased insight over time, and continually realign those processes for systemic and consistent improvement. With more than $2 billion in R&D investments, 11-plus years of customer software experience, an extensive global ecosystem of alliance partners, and more than 4,000 customers and 3.7 million live users, Siebel is the proven choice in helping organizations of all types and sizes achieve customer-driven business results. For more information, visit www.siebel.com. For more information on Siebel Systems solutions and services, please visit our Web site: CRM - http://www.siebel.com/crm; OnDemand Solutions - http://www.crmondemand.com; Industry CRM - http://www.siebel.com/industry-crm; Call Center & Service - http://www.siebel.com/call-center; Sales Force Automation - http://www.siebel.com/sales-force-automation; Marketing Automation - http://www.siebel.com/marketing-automation; Business Intelligence - http://www.siebel.com/business-intelligence; Integration Solutions - http://www.siebel.com/integration-solutions; CRM Services - http://www.siebel.com/crm-services Except for the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risk or uncertainties. Future operating results of Siebel Systems may differ from the results discussed or forecasted in the forward-looking statements due to factors that include, but are not limited to, risks associated with our pending merger with Oracle Corporation, customer relations, such as the availability of Siebel Systems' products and services, customer implementation of products and services, relationships with customers, third-party vendors and systems integrators, concentration of revenues in a relatively small number of customers, existence of errors or defects in products, ability to successfully manage growth, significant current and expected additional competition and the need to continue to expand product distribution and services offerings. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of Siebel Systems are included in Siebel Systems' Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available at www.sec.gov. Siebel Systems assumes no obligation to update the information in this press release. Siebel is a trademark of Siebel Systems, Inc. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. All other product and company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned for identification purposes only.