Currently, Select Comfort is using a Cognos-based customer data warehousing system, which will be phased out in favor of Siebel. Thyken explained that Siebel Business Analytics is more intuitive than Cognos Inc.'s software, which can be particularly complex when manipulating data.

Eventually, the company will have a complete view of customer activity, and will be able to aggregate the data with other related information, such as human resources and plant operations data. Thyken did not have information about the cost of the installation.

Although Thyken said he's hoping for tight out-of-the-box integration of Siebel with the E-Business Suite down the road, Select Comfort will rely on Informatica Corp.'s extract, transform and load technology for data sharing between the applications.