Is Right Now CRM better or worse than the CRM offering of
Salesforce.com and Siebel OnDemand, and why?

Dear apiary,


A comparative review by InfoWorld in January 2005 that covered RightNow
and Salesforce.com but not Siebel OnDemand concluded that Salesforce.com
was the foremost CRM offering in the marketplace, with a broader feature
set and better integration capabilities.

    A notable downside to [RightNow CRM 7.0] is its limited capability
    of integrating with back-end systems. Without Web services support
    or an extensive API, the integration options for RightNow users
    are dismal. Furthermore, the lack of an offline client or more
    comprehensive Outlook integration hurts RightNow?s prospective
    usefulness with mobile sales teams.

    Nonetheless, the SFA module represents a step in the right
    direction for those who want to boost sales revenue through
    automation and efficiency. For companies focused on bolstering
    customer service and marketing requirements in multichannel
    scenarios, RightNow is worth a serious look.

    [...]

    Despite a few foibles, Salesforce still leads the pack as a
    killer CRM solution, thanks to its feature set, usability, and
    extensibility. By packing a lot of value into a plug-and-play
    offering, it helps level the CRM playing field for small shops
    and enterprises alike. Companies in need of a broad CRM feature
    set with decent workflow and deep extensibility will find an
    excellent choice in Salesforce.com.

InfoWorld: IT Product Guide: Four-way CRM shootout
http://www.infoworld.com/RightNow_CRM_7.0/product_51240.html?view=1&curNodeId=0&index=0

This review awarded RightNow an overall score of 7.0 out of 10.0,
whereas Siebel Salesforce.com earned an 8.7 on the same scale.


A more recent study carried out in May 2005 by Nucleus Research, which
concentrates on Return On Investment (ROI) metrics to evaluate competing
products, found that Salesforce.com was weaker than RightNow. However,
it also found that Siebel CRM OnDemand is as good as RightNow in most
areas and better when it comes to business impact.

    [A] number of organizations that started using RightNow's customer
    support and service functionality can leverage the knowledge
    base in RightNow to provide upselling insight for sales and
    intelligence to marketing with RightNow's new components -- but
    will have to build the ROI beyond the customer support department
    to get buy-in and ensure adoption. Those who do will likely find
    significant incremental ROI. RightNow is the only on-demand CRM
    vendor to date that can provide customer references with more
    than 2000 users.

    [...]

    Siebel's hybrid model has the potential to support broad
    expansion, as [do] its industry-specific versions that enable
    some capabilities for partner management.


    Methodology:

    The Nucleus ROI Scores are based on Nucleus analysts'
    independent assessment of data gathered from an individual
    vendor's customers as well as other users in the market sector,
    and indicate Nucleus's assessment of the vendor's ability to
    deliver positive ROI to potential customers.

Nucleus Research: On-Demand CRM Market Scorecard
http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~mlaszlo/answers/nucleus.roi_scorecard.pdf

RightNow and Siebel OnDemand were awarded the same scores in three out
of five areas analyzed by Nucleus Research: both earned a 5 out of 5
for Deployment, 4 for Adoption, and 5 for Support. RightNow outscored
Siebel OnDemand in the Vendor area, earning 5 compared to Siebel's
4. However, Siebel earned a 4 in Business Impact, besting the 3 awarded
to RightNow. On balance, then, RightNow is not a better CRM solution
from the ROI perspective than Siebel OnDemand.


The Nucleus Research scorecard on RightNow elaborates on its assessment.

    The release of sales and marketing modules in late 2004 [was]
    an important step for RightNow in moving beyond just customer
    support and service to a more complete CRM offering for customers.

Nucleus Research: RightNow Technologies Scorecard
http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~mlaszlo/answers/nucleus.rightnow_scorecard.pdf


In the final analysis, RightNow does not appear to be a better solution
than either Salesforce.com or Siebel OnDemand. For the fundamental CRM
task of sales force automation and customer service, Salesforce.com
has a broader set of capabilities. For integration and expansion on the
enterprise level, Siebel Demand is the better choice.


Regards,

leapinglizard

good internet research, thanks