May 9, 2016 | Spinnaker Support Marketing
Anthony Cefola heads up global operations for Spinnaker Support’s Siebel CRM practice, which was formally launched in May 2013. His team is focused on service delivery and ensuring that customers remain highly satisfied, retained, and loyal. Anthony continues to grow his team of world-class software engineers to meet the market’s increasing demand.
We recently sat down with Anthony for an interview.
Q. What should we know about your team?
A. We have assembled a team of “A” players, who I would put up against anybody when it comes to all things Siebel. We have a combined Siebel experience level approaching 200 years, covering support, managed services, and consulting for all versions and products. My team is deployed out of all five of the company’s regional operations centers located in Denver, London, Mumbai, Singapore, and Tel Aviv.
Q. How long have you personally been involved with Siebel applications?
A. Back in 2000 I was working for a company that was acquired by Siebel Systems, and my Siebel story began. Back then Siebel was mostly a Desktop Client. I had already been working on the technologies that Siebel used such as operating systems, databases, and client-server architecture, so this was not new to me. I quickly came up to speed and became a configuration and scripting lead in the support organization.
Then Siebel 7 came out and it was web based. I loved this change, and it was a breakthrough innovation at the time. I moved over to the Server side to do installations, upgrades, and administration, becoming area expert. I later helped develop software for, and run, the Siebel Environment Labs at Siebel – which supported all of Technical Support and much of QA and Development.
I left Siebel around the time of the Oracle acquisition and went to a third-party maintenance company, to build up a new Siebel Support division. I saw this as an opportunity to deliver specialized support to clients outside of the restrictions of traditional support that relied on a “supportability matrix.” I truly wanted to help clients get what they wanted out of their Siebel implementations.
I joined Spinnaker Support to build up the Siebel Practice and I’ve been leading the team ever since. All in all, I have sixteen years of pure Siebel CRM experience.
Q. Why do you view Spinnaker Support’s blend of Siebel services as groundbreaking?
A. When we launched Spinnaker Support’s Siebel practice back in May 2013, our vision was to ultimately build a great team of Siebel software engineers with real-world experience spanning the wide gamut of Siebel versions and products. We also sought to amass A-players possessing deep support, managed services, and consulting experience. We have subsequently hired a great team of troubleshooters, forward thinkers, problem solvers, and technology gurus – who provide incremental value for any Siebel user at any time.
We believe that effective communication is key to success – among our team and with our clients. Everyone on my team is business trained. We can talk shop to the Siebel administrators and developers, business needs and requirements with the project leads, risk analysis with business analysts, and talk strategy and infrastructure impact with the CIO. We can very quickly understand their roles, what they want from the Siebel implementation, and how we will help bring it to life.
We believe that the best way to reduce risk to the implementation is with knowledge, and we share freely. As we diagnose issues and perform root cause analysis we don’t just give steps or answers. We also strive to teach and inform. We show why we came to a particular conclusion and how to best avoid similar problems in the future.
A strong and diverse team, effective communication, and good coaching; these ingredients are core to our strategy and vision.
With this being said, I’ll circle back to the question. Groundbreaking means first to market. Spinnaker Support is the first and only “pure-play” third-party Siebel support provider that adds a wide range of managed service and consulting services that can move organizations forward faster – regardless of version, product, geographic location, in-house talent level, or surrounding technology ecosystem. If an organization runs Siebel, with an implementation that scares other vendors, or with an integration that no one has heard of, we want to take on that challenge because we have the team that can do it.
Q. What market gaps are being filled by Spinnaker Support?
A. First and foremost, the market has long sought a worry-free alternative to expensive Oracle-provided support. It is nice to know that my company has never violated the intellectual property rights of others. Never have and never will. Yet, our customers still receive world-class support for a fraction of the cost. Worry-free.
Good Siebel software engineers are hard to access, especially for older versions of the software. We saw a diminishing pool of resources coming, which is exactly why we started building a wide range of Siebel skillsets three years ago. As a collective team, our stable of professionals is fluent in all Siebel versions new and old and we have practical working knowledge of the greater Siebel architecture ecosystem. We help organizations keep their systems stable, secure, and interoperable with our unique blend of support, managed services, and consulting – regardless of the version they run, where they run it, its degree of customization, or to what it’s connected. Groundbreaking.
Q. What are some of the toughest Siebel application challenges you’re team has resolved?
A. My team has faced many complex challenges spanning a wide range of Siebel architectures. Our strategy and approach is the same every time. First, we gain an understanding of the problem or challenge through root cause analysis and familiarity with the environment and the teams involved. From there we can architect solutions that meet the technical needs of the Siebel stakeholders and the business needs of the business owners.
Our team has helped integrate Siebel with newer operating systems, different databases, middleware, and with third party or homegrown software products. We have developed solutions for server and user Interface issues when requirements have changed and helped roadmap and project manage version upgrades.
We have designed solutions to architecture challenges common in today’s IT infrastructure where one application needs software/browser X and another needs software/browser – even though the applications seemed incompatible, we made them work seamlessly together. We have helped identify when Siebel is not the root cause of the issue, but we don’t stop there. We progress the issue outside of Siebel, often leading the charge to get to the right solution.
Q, Why should an enterprise running Siebel make the switch to Spinnaker Support?
- Our groundbreaking vision and execution of the vision.
- Talented, customer-focused software engineers, who love working at Spinnaker Support.
- Unique, diverse range of services that can benefit virtually any organization that runs Siebel CRM.
- Worry-free.
- Financially strong, built to last.
- Litigation free, always doing our jobs the right way.
Q. Wait Anthony. Why are you running off?
A. I’ve got problems to solve and customers to delight. Thanks for taking the time to interview me.
Spinnaker Third Party Siebel CRM Support Services
Siebel is known throughout the industry for its stability, reliability, and comprehensiveness. Loyal Siebel users, who depend on Siebel to for their sales, marketing and commerce lines of business, have been subject to diminished support, and are limited by the solutions Oracle is willing to provide.
Spinnaker Support offers “Pure Play” third-party CRM solutions for Siebel users frustrated with Oracle’s lack of support. Not only does Spinnaker Support offer a top-notch software alternative, we offer it at a rate up to 60% lower than the competition. Get started with Spinnaker Support today.
