SuccessFactors Appoints Ex-GE Executive Jeffrey Diana as CPO

SAN MATEO, Calif., Dec. 2, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Today, SuccessFactors, Inc. (Nasdaq: SFSF) announced the appointment of Jeffrey Diana as chief people officer, effective December 6, 2010.

“SuccessFactors is striving to be one of the best run organizations ever built, with an extraordinary and rewarding working experience for our team members, delivering breakthrough business execution for our customers, building a cash rich growth engine, using our own and other great management technologies,” said Lars Dalgaard, CEO. “Jeff will be strongly focused on the business impact potential of SuccessFactors’ products and a key leader for our customers’ transformational experience. He is also the right person to partner with for the next level of growth for SuccessFactors, and to be our strategic people business partner and leader for all our people across the world.”

Mr. Diana will replace the outgoing CPO, Vicki Bernholz, who has been in the role since September 2009. Ms. Bernholz will transition in her role until January 10, 2011.

“I’d like to thank Vicki for her tremendous efforts in building the team to where we are today. Her contributions are significant and she has matured our internal processes and systems to be best-in-class. We wish her the very best in her next endeavor,” said Dalgaard.

Mr. Diana is an accomplished business leader with a deep functional – and in particular strategic – expertise in Human Resources. He brings a diverse experience in enabling organizations to achieve strong performance through the creation of innovative people agendas focused on delivering superior value to the customer.

His experience includes senior HR leadership roles at General Electric, Microsoft, Safeco and Expedia with a sharp focus on talent management and designing global customer centric organizations to deliver strong growth.

• At Safeco Insurance, a 6,500 person, $6 billion, Fortune 500 company, Mr. Diana worked closely with the CEO to drive an aggressive growth agenda in the property and casualty insurance industry as the chief HR officer.
• Mr. Diana served in various HR leadership roles for Microsoft, focused on the small to mid-market role-based software, as well as new technology deployment services worldwide.
• For five years, Mr. Diana held several leadership positions at General Electric (GE), including in the $7.5B GE Advanced Materials division, and designing and executing the talent management strategy to enable a global expansion program for high technology Water and Security platforms outside the US; obtaining his Six Sigma Black Belt certification from the company.

“In order to fully unlock the business potential of organizations, we must first unlock the potential of our people. Finding a technology platform and a set of tools that can enable this when coupled with a strong progressive people agenda will propel organizations to new heights and help uncover the last frontier of leveraging our human capital to its fullest to do amazing things,” said Jeff Diana. “I lived this first hand at GE and it is now a part of my DNA. Everywhere I have been since then I have been looking for the platform and technology needed to take this concept to the next level. SuccessFactors is exactly that complete platform of quick to deploy business applications covering social business software, goals, analytics and now the full employee systems backbone and integrated talent and performance applications.”

About SuccessFactors, Inc.

SuccessFactors is a global leader in Business Execution Software. The SuccessFactors Business Execution (BizX) Suite, which is delivered through the cloud, improves business alignment, team execution and people performance to drive results for companies of all sizes. Across 168 countries and 34 languages, more than 8 million users and 3,000 companies leverage SuccessFactors every day, up from approximately 300,000 users and 100 companies in 2003. BizX bridges the gap between strategy and success by allowing every person in an organization to execute against their goals better and faster. SuccessFactors' recent acquisitions of YouCalc, Inform and CubeTree supplement SuccessFactors' core BizX strategy with solutions that align with SuccessFactors' mission of helping companies get work done by delivering robust business insights and improved collaboration. To learn more, visit: www.successfactors.com.

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"Safe harbor" statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are SuccessFactors' current expectations and beliefs.

These forward-looking statements include statements about growth prospects. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements include: our ability to retain customers and to experience high customer renewal rates; whether customers renew their agreements for additional modules or users; pricing pressures; the uncertain impact of the overall global economic conditions, including on customers, prospective customers and partners, renewal rates and length of sales cycles; the fact that both the business execution and the social business markets are at an early stage of development, and may not develop as rapidly as we anticipate; risks related to the integration of the acquisitions, including retaining customers and employees and managing geographically-dispersed operations; competitive factors; outages or security breaches; our ability to develop, and market acceptance of, new services; the impact of any discovered product defects or outages; our ability to continue to sell our services outside the HR area; our ability to manage our growth; our ability to successfully expand our sales force and its effectiveness; whether our resellers and other partners will be successful in marketing our products; our ability to continue to manage expenses; the impact of unforeseen expenses, including as a result of integrating acquisitions; and general economic conditions worldwide. If any such risks or uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions proves incorrect, our results could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements we make.

Further information on these and other factors that could affect these forward-looking statements is included in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and in our most recent report on Form 10-Q and in other filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time.

These documents are or will be available in the SEC Filings section of the Investor Relations section of our website at www.successfactors.com/investor. Information on our website is not part of this release.

SOURCE SuccessFactors, Inc.