RealMarket - From the Top Executive Interview

	From the Top
From the Top *- Executive to Executive -* Brent Frei, CEO of Onyx shares his candid views about the company's early bets on Microsoft technologies and what that means today given the changing landscape. Learn more about what he sees on the CRM horizon and how he views the upcoming shakeout in CRM. Brent Frei, President and CEO, Onyx Software, Inc. RealMarket: Onyx just announced the release of version 4.0, a new version of the CRM enterprise suite. What’s new and how does this change how you view the CRM market? Frei: First, version 4.0 is a completion of our work with the product infrastructure. The remainder of the web services, the XML integration and the administration tools are now in place. Also, from a product functionality perspective, we’ve moved the web product to an extremely competitive position in the market. With our energies focused on infrastructure, functionality didn’t always release as quickly but ease-of-use and feature set are now advantages for us. Second we have added new platforms utilizing the AIX operating system and the Oracle database. Organizations that require those platforms can now take advantage of Onyx. Lastly, I’d like to talk about scalability. Our product has been independently verified to scale to more than 57,000 users. No one can scale to the level we can. Pick any other company. Oracle or SAP or anyone else - we have the record against all the other systems out there. Although not all companies require this level of scalability, it demonstrates the strength of the platform, which can help our customers get the best possible performance using less hardware. This, in turn, directly lowers their total cost of ownership - regardless of the size of their implementation.” RealMarket: What’s the secret of your scalability success? Frei: We designed the application around the strengths and weaknesses of the Microsoft platform. With Oracle, we did the same thing. From the ground up, we designed the product around the pieces that are germane to the database. Almost everyone else has just done a port. They wonder why it doesn’t scale when they move from Unix to NT. It’s because they don’t understand that the design has to work in concert with the technology stacks. This is a tremendous benefit to the customer. And it is good for us because we deal with fewer support questions. Say what you want to say about a particular technology’s strengths and weaknesses, but leveraging its work up and down the stack is a much better strategy. RealMarket: What do the recent announcements about Microsoft entering the CRM market mean to Onyx? Frei: Microsoft’s evolution makes perfect sense to me. They started out with the client operating systems, client applications, and server operating systems. So the server applications space is a logical next step. But they are literally years behind what we are doing. In the long run, what Microsoft does will be complementary to what Onyx is all about. Make no mistake the server application market is different. It is about more than technology and distribution models. It’s built on the basics of having an organization designed around selling business applications. You have to have domain expertise, high-end services and a direct sales force to do what we do in CRM. RealMarket: Gartner recently positioned Onyx as a niche player in their Large Enterprise CRM magic quadrant. What changed at Onxy to make that happen? Frei: It was a focus on working more closely with the Gartner analysts. We found that it took an investment in sharing what we do with a wide range of analysts. Many had not seen the Onyx application so we needed to make sure they spent time evaluating the Onyx solution. In addition, they had full access to our customers to evaluate how Onyx customers use the product. We were already there but it took more of a focused effort on our part. RealMarket: Looking to the future, what is the biggest change you see on the CRM horizon? Frei: I think the single biggest change will be around success. There will be more failed projects coming out of the woodwork but the successes will begin to become more visible and clear. There is this general marketing veneer that suggests 100% success with CRM. That is not true and the misconception doesn’t help anyone. For Onyx, we are looking to work with organizations where CRM is truly going to matter. For instance, vertical solution providers (VSPs) are a strong fit because CRM is a bottom line issue for them - if CRM fails for them they are out of business. Also, we look to work with companies that need customer information access across the enterprise. Overall, organizations that need to deploy across business units are a good fit for us. RealMarket: How do you view your competitive landscape? Frei: We never lose to Peoplesoft when it’s based on reference calls. We never lose to SAP. We never lose to Oracle because they don’t have any references, or at least they aren’t letting prospects talk to them. RealMarket: What about Siebel? Frei: We have customers that have come from Siebel. I know dozens of companies where the boards have literally stopped the projects. I just talked with an organization that said they spent $92M on a CRM project. Now they are looking at a proposal from us where we have already successfully deployed in two divisions and our cost is a fraction in comparison. We have our hurdles in terms of redeployment because the Siebel solutions are so expensive and the companies can’t afford to decommission it and take the write-off. But the days when companies would blindly write checks for tens of millions of dollars for CRM are gone and that will hurt Siebel. RealMarket: The big CRM players (Siebel, PeopleSoft, Oracle and SAP) are all talking about the mid-market with new SMB solutions. How do you defend your position against the goliaths in all the segments you play? Frei: We like to draw a box around our prospects and surround them with examples of real Onyx customers getting real ROI. It’s not about scoring long lists of functionality. It’s about good infrastructures that are appropriate for the mid-market. Companies in this market don’t have the luxury to fail at CRM. They tend to do more due diligence. They have focus on finding the right solution and we are well suited for those companies. It’s not about buying stuff that is far too complex and expensive. Of course, appropriately priced solutions for the mid-market is a big issue as well. RealMarket: In a crowded market, how does Onyx differentiate itself? Frei: We are just focused on customers succeeding with us. I don’t know that I have an elevator pitch. I’ve been in the business 8 years and I’ve seen two major waves of CRM companies come and go. We’ve learned that if we deliver value against the customer’s objectives we will always be in business. Ultimately and eventually that will place us in one of the top three spots in the industry. We’ll just stay focused on our customers and delivering in a hard market. RealMarket: Who are the survivors? Frei: It’s us, Siebel and one of the ERP solution providers. There’s a new world in CRM focused on customer success. Our systems pivot on the customer. No other CRM application is designed with the customer at the core. Others have started as a sales automation tool, a marketing database schema or something else. Our focus on addressing everyone’s needs - the partner, the vendor, the employee, and the customer - is the differentiator. top of page