July 26, 2005

SAP America has hired yet another Siebel executive, appointing James Hughes, formerly VP and general manager for financial services at Siebel. Hughes will be vice-president of financial services for SAP-North America.

The news comes just about one month after SAP hired three VP-level executives away from customer relationship management (CRM) rival Siebel.

Of course, SAP has also been hiring away from other companies, in particular Oracle, but the raids on Siebel's executive talent call attention to that company's diminished position in the CRM world.

Plus, since Siebel is smaller than Oracle, the loss of executives has increased resonance.

There will be some consolation for Siebel in the news that SAP's CRM revenues have stopped growing. Of course, SAP is growing its revenues in every other area, so CRM saturation doesn't represent the structural crisis that it does for Siebel.

Source: Line 56