Siebel and Palm sign sales automation deal

NEWS Sales force automation is hitting the PDA market after Palm and CRM giant Siebel sealed a deal to make mobile sales people more efficient. A mobile version of Siebel's sales support software called Sales Handheld 7 will be available for Palm handheld computers. The products will be sold to corporate users under a joint marketing agreement. Both companies will deploy the technology internally to their own sales forces. Sales Handheld 7 will enable PDA users to access Siebel's fixed enterprise sales application, including accounts, price lists, expenses, quotes, calendar and contacts. Sales force information is hailed to be the reason for the failure of the majority of customer relationship management (CRM) implementations as sales people are notoriously difficult to control and kick into line, according to IT consultancies.