For this Partner Spotlight, we talked with Robert Ponder, Lead Siebel Upgrade Architect, Siebel Performance Specialist and Director at Ponder Pro Serve.

Overview

Ponder Pro Serve is a small Siebel CRM consultancy with 10 consultants and a long running pedigree with almost 30 years of Siebel CRM implementation experience. We are currently working on Siebel CRM and Oracle Analytics Server (OAS) projects for 5 customers. We specialize in helping customers realize their Siebel CRM objectives by upgrading them to the current version and to improve application performance.

We are committed to quality customer service. Our goal is to build customer loyalty by delivering project results that are much better than average. Often this means our customers save a substantial amount of time and money on their projects. We are also  a 100% female-owned small business and an official Oracle partner.

What are your key Siebel CRM-related offerings and services that are available?

Key services that we deliver for Siebel CRM customers are:

  • Siebel upgrades – including fixed price upgrades
  • Siebel performance tuning on Oracle and SQL Server databases
  • Siebel configuration and development
  • Oracle Analytics Server configuration and development
  • Siebel load testing using LoadRunner and Oracle Application Testing Suite (OATS)

For a full list of services please read here

What other products or innovations have you created that complement Siebel CRM?

We have developed a series of Java programs they let us report and pinpoint Siebel CRM performance issues. We have also developed a series of Java programs that automate many parts of the Siebel upgrade that are normally performed manually. This allows us to save time and cost to customers with our upgrade service offerings. 

What recent Siebel CRM customer success stories do you have to share?

We have a large number of client success stories that have been highlighted by Oracle at various events such as Oracle OpenWorld.

  • Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Upgrade Cast Study
  • Telco Upgrade Case Study (Extreme Scale – 10k users, 5TB database, 2 million transactions per day)
  • Oracle OpenWorld 2006 2006 Upgrade Projects – Lessons Learned In The Real World Of Doing Upgrades
  • Oracle OpenWorld 2007 S290536: Siebel 8.0 Upgrade Best Practices
  • Oracle OpenWorld 2009 Siebel Application Upgrades: Everything You Always Wanted To Know And Then Some
  • Oracle OpenWorld 2010 S317699 – Upgrading Your Siebel CRM with Reduced Risk and Lowered Cost: Customer Stories
  • Oracle OpenWorld 2011 Upgrading Your Siebel CRM with Reduced Risk and Lowered Cost: Customer Successes
  • Oracle OpenWorld 2013 CON9046 Siebel Upgrade for Dummies: Increase the Agility of Your Siebel Investment
  • Oracle OpenWorld 2014 CON8512: Best Practices That Will Help IT Implement Siebel Innovation Packs
  • Oracle OpenWorld 2015 Insperity OneVoice – Open UI Upgrade Project , 
  • Increased Agility enabled by the Rapid Adoption of Siebel Innovation Packs
  • Oracle OpenWorld 2019 Cru Siebel Constituent Management

To find out more read here

Siebel CRM Upgrade Myths

It’s a long process…

In our 25+ years of Siebel Upgrade experience, the fastest upgrade we’ve ever done? We completed an upgrade for McKesson Corporations’ Provider Technologies Group in just 3.5 months. The instant ROI delivered, reduced the time needed by 50% to prepare 1000’s of Sales contracts and 100’s of Partner agreements. As part of this upgrade, we also replaced a complex Actuate reporting solution with a much simpler Oracle BI Publisher solution.

Our implementation is too complex…

Customers can often be overwhelmed by the scale of configuration, scripting and interfaces in their Siebel CRM deployment to think that an upgrade will be a huge and expensive project. Yet the McKesson case study is also a good example. We have completed many Siebel CRM upgrade projects in around 5 months that were considered highly customized (lots of configuration, scripting, interfaces etc).

Our current Siebel CRM release is too old…

Many of Siebel CRM customers on older releases believe that an upgrade is not possible. Our advice to these customers is simply to provide us with a copy of the Development schema and we will upgrade it for you in our labs to demonstrate that a Siebel CRM upgrade is possible and not so daunting. We have done this a number of times including 2-step upgrades and even one 3-step upgrade.

Customers on older Siebel CRM releases should look to upgrade and stay current with the latest Siebel release. Staying current means you can benefit from the latest Siebel CRM innovations. If the system is mission-critical (which most are), then this reduces platform risk should any sudden changes in IT cause a malfunction, or the potential for security vulnerabilities. Once upgraded to the latest Siebel CRM release, the cumulative monthly release updates can be applied so the incremental effort to stay current is greatly reduced. 

If you are looking for a very expeirenced partner with proven track record to perform your upgrade from an older Siebel CRM release – please get in touch!

For more information on Siebel CRM solutions and services, you can visit the Ponder Pro Serve website.