SuccessFactors Unveils Innovations to Accelerate Business Execution

SAN MATEO, Calif., March 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- SuccessFactors, Inc. (Nasdaq: SFSF), the global leader in business execution software, unveiled significant new innovations in cloud analytics, mobile access and social collaboration. Enterprise software has long been made for the experts and not tailored to the everyday business user and many companies are tired of implementing software and training employees only to have it never be used. SuccessFactors' March 2011 cloud release directly addresses these key challenges with new easy-to-use solutions in analytics, mobile and social collaboration to provide a captivating user experience of consumer apps, within the connected platform of its Business Execution (BizX) suite. Product updates focus on putting workforce information to use in real-time, especially for strategic initiatives like attracting and hiring top talent as the global economy makes a comeback.

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"I talk to customers every day who are struggling to find and use information about their workforce to determine the right moves to increase productivity and execution," said Brad Mattick, worldwide head of product marketing, SuccessFactors. "The additions we have made in social collaboration, mobile access and workforce analytics across the BizX suite are designed to dramatically improve the people performance and business execution of any company."  

"With this release, SuccessFactors is delivering important new capabilities for its customers in embedded intelligence," says Naomi Bloom, the managing partner of Bloom & Wallace.  "In addition to identifying the key questions that managers should ask, SuccessFactors also embeds strategy recommendations and benchmarks so users can understand why those questions are important and how to improve their results."

Notable new innovations from the March 2011 cloud release include:

Analytics

New features make it easier for executives, managers and employees to put workforce data to strategic use – going beyond static reports to provide answers and next-step advice for the most pressing questions. For example, an executive can get instant answers to questions like "how long does it take to cascade goals throughout our organization?" A business manager can see answers to questions about her team compared to the rest of the company or industry - in areas like performance against goals and employee retention. A marketing manager can see how real-time adjustments in her marketing team's goals might impact compensation and budget allocation.

• Analytics for All: Workforce-related metrics aren't just for HR. Now business managers can monitor metrics, including their team members' performance, with analytics via email push notifications that provide drill-down details to promote proactive decision-making.
• Answers While You Work: End users see the real-time impact of changes in analytics, starting with metrics related to pay-for-performance and budget allocation.

Mobile

SuccessFactors customers will now have continuous access to people and projects for time-sensitive initiatives to help improve overall productivity on the go. In particular, attracting and hiring top talent is a time sensitive and competitive process. The activities that go into hiring the best people happen 24/7, around the globe – and touch many people throughout an organization. Now the right people can easily capitalize on opportunities immediately, getting approvals, adding comments and ratings while they are still fresh after an interview – all on the go via iPhone, Blackberry or iPad.

• Mobile Recruiting: Interviewers can give candidate feedback and managers can approve job requisitions from mobile devices to increase efficiency and cut down on delays.
• Mobile Documents: Employees can review and comment on documents, like resumes and PowerPoint presentations, shared via CubeTree directly from mobile devices.
• Mobile Alerts: Employees will now be able receive instant notifications for messages or replies to CubeTree comments on any mobile device.
• Mobile Contacts: Find contact details for anyone within the organization and call, email, text or direct message with one click straight from iPhone, Blackberry or iPad.

Social Collaboration

Collaboration continues to grow as the pace of business accelerates and employees demand more real-time tools and email alternatives to interact and get work done.  The SuccessFactors BizX suite incorporates workforce information for people across the entire organization, making its collaboration environment inherently inclusive, helping break down social and operational silos.  Popular use-cases include improving collaboration around the recruiting and hiring process as well as dramatically accelerating time-to-productivity for new hires.

• Social Sourcing: Recruiting goes social with integration to Jobvite, tapping hundreds of external social networks and employees' own connections to find the best candidates, faster.
• Auto Profile: CubeTree is the only collaboration tool that automatically pre-populates employee profiles and organizational structure.  
• Smart Groups: Employees are automatically assigned to relevant groups across the company based on information from their profile, including their start date, role, geographic location and department.
• Easy Document Management: The new SharePoint Connector takes advantage of existing investments by making SharePoint-housed documents visible in CubeTree where employees can easily make comments and suggestions.
• Globally Aware: Companies now have the option to house collaboration data in an EU data center and roll out CubeTree in multiple languages, including French, German, English, Spanish, Japanese and Simplified Chinese.

The SuccessFactors BizX suite operates entirely in the cloud and is updated five times a year with new innovations and solutions to help improve business execution. Product updates are made available to customers in March, May, July, September and November.

About SuccessFactors

SuccessFactors is the leading provider of cloud-based Business Execution (BizX) software solutions to organizations of all sizes, with more than 8 million users across multiple industries and geographies. We strive to delight our customers by delivering innovative solutions, a broad range of content, process expertise and best practices knowledge gained from serving our large and varied customer base. Today, we have more than 3,200 customers in more than 168 countries using our application suite in 34 languages. 

Execution Is The Difference™

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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 future 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 the business execution market is 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.

SOURCE SuccessFactors, Inc.