Siebel Systems, Inc.
One of these partnerships has led to the development of the Siebel Sales Handheld, created in conjunction with Siebel Systems, Inc., at http://www.siebel.com. The application is a fully functional Siebel client that runs on any Palm device with 8MB of RAM. With Siebel Sales, you can forecast future business, generate customized presentations and proposals, and produce customer communications such as personalized invitations, thank you notes, letters, and other correspondence.

According to Palm, the application is intuitive and easy to use, with all information available within three screen taps. The application is still in development and is set to ship as part of the Siebel 2001 release, anticipated to be in the Spring of 2001.

Pivotal
Pivotal Corporation, a provider of business-to-business solutions for e-business relationship management at http://www.pivotal.com, will be offering Pivotal Anywhere, a customizable browser-based solution. It's pictured in Figure A.

FIGURE A

The Pivotal Anywhere portal allows you to access your corporate information.

If your Palm device is equipped with Go America or OmniSky's wireless modem, this application will give you live access to business information such as contacts, sales opportunities, and customer profiles. You'll be able to access corporate information and make changes to corporate data, and you'll be notified of mission-critical business activities.

FrontRange
In its partnership with Palm, FrontRange, at http://www.frontrange.com, is offering two products: GoldMine Everywhere Server, a Web clipping application for the enterprise, and GoldMine 5.0 for small groups.

The GoldMine Everywhere Server for the PalmVII offers GoldMine FrontOffice 2000. This software can allow you to access information about customers, prospects, and calendars. You can also look up contacts' addresses, update your schedule, and follow up with clients via email or fax. It's pictured in Figure B.

FIGURE B

Goldmine Everywhere Server offers GoldMine FrontOffice 2000.

GoldMine 5.0, meanwhile, works with FrontOffice to offer you calendar and address book integration. You can carry your contacts and calendar with you everywhere on your Palm handheld and simply update your GoldMine database when you get back to the office.

SalesLogix
SalesLogix CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for the enterprise is another Web clipping application. It has come about through Palm's partnership with SalesLogix at http://www.saleslogix.com. This solution allows you to access and update SalesLogix information such as accounts, contacts, opportunity information, activities, notes, and history through a wirelessly enabled Palm handheld. It's pictured in Figure C.

FIGURE C

SalesLogix CRM lets you access your SalesLogix information from a Palm device.

One company's success
Julie Pederson stressed to me that today, innovative companies are extending enterprise applications for their increasingly mobile field sales organizations through handheld solutions. As an example, she told me about Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., an independent home loan lender that has adopted the Palm VII as their sales force automation tool of choice. Kevin Lavalle, Senior Vice President, Retail eBusiness, Countrywide Home Loans says this of his company's experience with Palm's solutions: