Siebel Systems Inc., still recovering from its worst financial quarter ever, hopes to reinvigorate sales with a major upgrade of its eBusiness Applications suite. But with some companies strapped for resources and delaying implementation of customer-relationship management software, Siebel may still have some rough quarters ahead.

The software focuses on business processes rather than on tracking customers. Siebel is releasing 20 versions of 7.5 for specific industries, with new functionality in each version that uses best practices in business processes culled from 10 years of customer experience and research. The suite includes a library of nearly 500 documented best practices from various industries and a new universal application network, a set of prebuilt business processes that are designed to work with any application- integration server. The universal application network means CRM applications can access data from many sources without requiring extensive integration and configuration work, says Ed Abbo, Siebel's VP of technology.

The vendor also is using business-analytics technologies from a company it acquired last year, nQuire Software Inc., to create role-specific interfaces and functionality for various users.

Siebel reported net income of $26.8 million on revenue of $405.6 million for its second quarter ended June 30, compared with net income of $76.6 million on $560.2 million in the year-ago quarter. Most of its revenue comes from consulting and maintenance fees on existing contracts; the lag in the economy means many customers aren't buying software. Package-shipping company Unishippers purchased two applications from Siebel's 7.0 suite in July but probably won't implement them until at least the first quarter of next year, says Brandy Skylling, the company's director of technology products. "We don't have the resources to implement them right now," she says.

SAP, with CRM software revenue that's about a quarter of Siebel's, last week debuted an upgrade to mySAP CRM. A portal framework in version 3.1 lets users tailor the CRM app. They can also more easily aggregate customer data contained in internal business applications with data from other sources.