19 November 2009 - Siebel Career Update - What am I worth 2010?

What am I worth? What do agencies and employers look for in Siebel candidates? How do I find the best Siebel roles? In our last event for the year, we'll be covering these and more questions about the Siebel employment market. So if you're currently thinking about your next Siebel role or are just curious about market salary/contract rates, what you should have in your CV, what you should (and shouldn't) say in an interview or any other aspect of Siebel careers and recruitment, come along and hear from a selection of experienced recruiters, HR and line managers on how to best position yourself for your next role.

Our final event for the year will be held on Thursday 19 November 2009. This event will be a presentation from the following speakers:-

Simon Moss
Simon is a Director of The Recruitment Company (better known as TRC). He has specialised in Siebel recruitment since 1998 and has, at one time or another, recruited for the majority of Australia's Siebel projects. Simon changed roles at the beginning of 2009 and currently heads up TRC Group's Public Sector division. TRC Group are one of only 9 agencies approved to supply Siebel contractors to NSW Government on the new C100 contract.

Sarah Gregorowski
Sarah Gregorowski, Sarah has been recruiting in Australia for three years and took over from Simon Moss as TRC Group's Siebel specialist in January 2009. Prior to running TRC Group's Siebel desk Sarah specialised in the recruitment of business analysis and testing candidates within the investment banking sector.

Paul Ansell
Paul has been a Recruitment Consultant for the past 9 years in both the UK & Australia. Currently an owner and Director of TRS, he has consistently offered both his clients and candidates an outstanding ability to understand their needs and match their requirements precisely. Paul understands the 3 key elements within the recruitment process; The Client and the position in hand, The Candidate and exactly what they want, coupled with a deep understanding of the technology that he is recruiting. Paul is the Lead Consultant within the Siebel CRM & BI market within TRS.

Robert Leatch
Robert is a veteran IT and Siebel professional with many years experience in hands-on technical roles and in leading and managing large scale IT projects and implementations. He has significant experience as a line manager in recruiting Siebel professionals to staff teams for which he is responsible.

Kim Delaney
Kim is HR/Operations Manager for Bright Blue Solutions, a leading Siebel and Oracle BI Consultancy in the Australian market. Kim has over 20 years HR and recruitment experience, much of which has been gained recruiting IT and other Consultants for Professional Services and Consulting organizations.

20 August 2009 - Real World Integration

Real World Integration: the theories, practicalities and pitfalls of making enterprise applications communicate.

The event will feature a moderated panel discussion on integrating Siebel. Three integration specialists share their experiences and give their thoughts on the practical implications of the service oriented architecture.

The panel included:

Gus Tanudji
Gus is a Siebel Technical Architect/PM. He has been involved in Siebel integration projects since 2000, constructing both realtime and non realtime interfaces.

James Neave
James is an Integration Architect specialising in webMethods, Java and BPM, who's spent the past nine years integrating ancient mainframes, modern web systems and everything in between - even Siebel.

Chris Marais
Chris is an OBIEE (Oracle BI Enterprise Edition) practitioner who cut his teeth integrating Siebel applications with decision support systems, using both proprietary vendor solutions and purpose built code.

Stuart Hamilton (moderator)
Stuart's a Siebel integration specialist whose first integration used COM in VBA for an interactive hookup with Siebel 98. He's been building variations of the same interface ever since.

4 June 2009 - Siebel and Customer Interactive Solutions

In a time of Global Financial challenges that is the current economic climate, companies need to work smarter, not just harder. With the right combination of Customer Relationship Management tools, businesses can be more strategic - and more profitable - by applying their resources more efficiently to serving and developing customers.

This is especially true when providing customers with a superior contact experience. In the world of the contact centre, it's all about connecting your customers to the right people with the right information as quickly as possible.

We are very pleased to announce the experts in Interaction Management Robert Allman, General Manager, Customer Interactive Solutions (CIS) and Chris Grimshaw, Solution Architect - Customer Interactive Solutions of Dimension Data, together with representatives from Genesys, will be presenting an overview of this new strategic imperative and its significance as a complimenting solution to Siebel.

Presenter Profiles

Robert Allman
Robert is the General Manager, Customer Interactive Solutions (CIS) for Dimension Data Australia.

Robert has more than 10 years experience in the contact centre and IT industries. Prior to joining Dimension Data Australia, he was General Manager of CIS for Dimension Data South Africa, where he leveraged his experience as a CIS Consultant.

Before Dimension Data, Robert worked for UK-based contact centre company, The Merchants Group, where he was responsible for managing client relationships, service levels, account profitability, IT development and business strategy.

Chris Grimshaw
Chris is the Solution Architect for Customer Interactive Solutions at Dimension Data Australia.

Chris has been a Solution Architect in Dimension Data's Customer Interactive Solutions group for the past 2 years, architecting bespoke Contact Centre solutions for major Australian clients and has over 12 years experience in the Contact Centre industry.

Prior to joining Dimension Data Chris was a Solution Architect in the UK for British Telecom's dedicated Major Clients Contact Centre design and deliver team - BT eCRM Solutions.

Chris' technology focus has been across a number of technologies, including Cisco, Genesys, Verint and numerous switch vendors, but his main aim is to deliver complete end to end contact centre solutions.

26 February 2009 - "Siebel Business Process Automation & An Interview With A Siebel TAM"

Business Process Automation in Siebel is something that is required in every project - but how to do it? Siebel provides a variety of methods including Task Based UI, Smartscript, Business Rules, Workflow and Script. Dennis Thong, Principal Technical Account Manager (TAM) with Oracle will present an overview of the configuration options, how they work, and when to use them.

Ever wondered what a Siebel TAM actually does? The second part of the evening will present a unique insight, with our "interview with a TAM!". Dennis Thong and his fellow TAMs from Oracle will open up to SUGA on the insights gleaned from their unique jobs. What's the most common problem they come across? What's the best implementation they've worked on? The worst?

20 November 2008 - "Siebel in the Human Services Arena"

Siebel CRM has traditionally been used by private sector organisations to optimise their front office operations to drive increased efficiencies in the area of Sales, Marketing & Customer Service. However, in recent times, public sector organisations have also been increasingly adopting the use of CRM technologies to solve business challenges within their own organisations. This has been driven in part due to the rising demand of citizens for the same level of service and support provided by the private sector.

We would like to invite you to our last Sydney event for the calendar year on Thursday 20 November 2008 to hear from one of the first public sector organisations in Australia to have implemented Siebel to solve some of these challenges. Presenting on the night will be Kerry Holling, CIO, from the NSW Department of Community Services (DOCS), where Siebel has been implemented as the organisation wide front-office platform of choice. Join us to hear Kerry share his insights and perspectives on Siebel both in his organisation as well as in the broader Human Services arena.

21 August 2008 - "The Single View of a Customer - Myth or Reality"

Organisations implement CRM to achieve the vision of a single view of the customer.  Is this vision achievable or an unobtainable goal? It is one thing to capture customer information but how do organisations deal with customer information captured in different ways? Can your CRM system recognize that John, Jonathan and Johnny Doe are the same person? Is AA B Plumbing the same business as A B Plumbers? What are the best approaches in Siebel to searching, data quality and data correction? What is your approach to customer master data management?

Join us for our next panel event on Thursday 21st Aug 2008 to hear Siebel specialists talk about their experiences in managing this issue in their previous projects. This discussion will be a moderated panel with the following expert Siebel professionals:-

• Greg Lansom, Director Business System Support, Dept of Community Services
• Mike Peppou, CRM Lead, News Corporation
• Rahul Dutta, Dev & Support Mgr, NSW Government Licensing Service

This panel discussion will be moderated by Tom McCutcheon, an experienced Application Architect from AMP.  Tom is also a member of the SUGA organising committee. 

There is no charge to attend SUGA events.  However, registration is required for catering purposes; please register if you intend to attend.  Additional sponsorship opportunities are available to organizations interested in supporting the user group and the Siebel community.

Mike Read – Business Manager, Optus Business. Mike has been involved in the Siebel CRM program at Optus for seven years from its start. Mike has played a number of roles in the Siebel program at Optus and he has been responsible for Business units to IT liaison, the integration of Siebel into Business processes and vice versa.

The discussion was moderated by Stuart Hamilton. Stuart is an experienced Senior Siebel Consultant, and is currently the Integration Lead at News Limited.  For photos from the event, Click Here.