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Siebel Systems Inc. announced late Wednesday a repackaging of its customer relationship management applications for homeland security.
Known as the Siebel Solutions for Homeland Security, the software will seek to apply some of the lessons learned from managing customer relationships in the business world to the increasing drive to improve domestic security in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The concept of tying together information from various systems and channels to form a single view of the customer would be applied to bring together information from the unwieldy collection of national security and other government agencies and departments grouped under the Homeland Security umbrella to form a single view of the suspect, according to Siebel officials, in San Mateo, Calif.
Siebel Solutions for Homeland Security focuses on five areas including detection, preparation, prevention, protection and response and recovery. Working much as a CRM system, the software seeks to manage incoming leads and tips, allow organizations to share information and communicate it to the public as desired, aggregate data from multiple sources, coordinate investigations, track and coordinate resources and response activities, even allow response team members to have mobile access to the system.
The system would have Siebel 7s SmartWeb architecture, integrate with existing government application systems and support analytical applications.
As yet, no government agencies have licensed the software, though, and given the long and drawn out nature and complexities of CRM implementations, its fair to ask if such a system could ever be effectively deployed in a timely manner.
But Siebel, under increasing competitive pressures in from CRM competitors, needs to find new customers, as it fends off challenges by enterprise software heavyweights like SAP AG, PeopleSoft Inc. and Oracle Corp. and even upstart hosted CRM provider Salesforce.com.
Siebel executives could not be reached for comment on when Siebel Solutions for Homeland Security would be available, though the software appears to simply be a repurposing of the existing Siebel 7 application set, which will is expected to ship this month.