E.Piphany Loses $8.9M In 4Q

E.Piphany

Including amortization of goodwill and restructuring charges, the loss was $36.8 million, or 53 cents per share.

The company, which blazed the trail in Web-based sales and marketing analytics, faces giant operational CRM vendors in a heated market. In an earnings call Wednesday, Siebel Systems Chairman Tom Siebel said a flock of CRM vendors including E.Piphany were in dire straits. Thursday afternoon, E.Piphany President and CEO Roger Siboni told analysts his company has competed well against operational vendors including Siebel, playing on its marketing and sales strengths.

Siboni was cautiously optimistic about IT spending trends going into 2002. "People are getting back to business, solving problems and addressing them . . . they need to keep the trains running," he said. E.Piphany plans to ship the first components of E-6, a Java 2, Enterprise Edition-compliant version of its product suite, in the first quarter.

E.Piphany, based here, plans to better leverage its partners to bolster sales and implementations. Key integration partners now include Accenture, KPMG and Deloitte.

"We've begun to focus more and more on fewer large integrators. That lets us concentrate on the relationship, both corporate-to-corporate as well as at the field level. We've partnered well with them around verticals," he said.