SuccessFactors Releases 71st Version of Its Employee Management Software
Mark Hendrickson
12 comments »
You know a company’s trying hard to promote a new version of its software when it puts together an acronym to describe it. SuccessFactors, provider of hosted enterprise software for “performance and talent management”, has opted for ULTRA: User Delight, Leading-Edge Innovation, Technology Agnostic, Results-Focused Capabilities, and Advanced Integration.
I’m not entirely sure what those all mean, but the basic idea is that SuccessFactors has become even more “Web 2.0″ with its latest release, the 71st since its founding in 2001. Employees can use SuccessFactors to track their professional goals, and companies can use the software to conduct performance reviews and assess competencies. There’s a bunch of other capabilities built-in that help with recruiting and the distribution of stocks and bonuses as well.
From the looks of things, SuccessFactors tries to do a lot of things at once. Not only does the software intend to help with employee management, it also serves as an employee directory and organizational mapping service. If I were an employee of a company that used SuccessFactors, I think I would actually find it much more useful for finding information about my colleagues than for charting developments in my career. But perhaps others are compelled to structure their goals explicitly and use it to determine whether they are competent enough to fill a new position.
SuccessFactors went public just this past November. Analysis of the IPO can be found here and here.
71st? Dang.
We just started using Success Factors’ end-of-year review system in my office, and it’s without question the most cryptic web-app ever developed. I’ve been given the admin account to set things up and it’s absolute garbage.
Interesting software but I wonder how long it will be before Google releases something like this (if Microsoft hasn’t already). I am sure they already have this running and developed internally, they are growing rapidly and their “employee map” is constantly changing as a result - this would be essential to keep track of who is doing what, when and how. Reaching 71.0 is a heck of an achievement, that is, if each bug fix is counted as a .1 or .1.1
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They have a pretty cool Flex App for small businesses.
http://www.successfactors.com/.....s-edition/
Doesn’t require much to set it up and use it. Its actually kinda fun to use.
Taleo is way better than this. Taleo has a variety of options. With regards to the IPO in mind, its a decent IPO woth around 450M. One site that I would recommend for pre ipo analysis is http://www.trialipo.com
Taleo is better at all talent management solutions, i thikn they would make a great offering. Well, lets see down the road its imminent.
OOPS!!!
I totally forgot this. Taleo is already publicly held. I wasn’t paying attention, sorry folks.
I wanna see more coverage on more and new startups tired of seeing old stuff here, regardless I will be always loyal to TechCrunch!!
Checkout the management team of the company…
http://www.successfactors.com/company/management/
It has 27 VP level people and above. The company did about 30 mil in
revenues and made 10MM in losses.
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=SFSF
This will become a penny stock shortly. I cannot believe how top heavy this
can be.
“User Delight, Leading-Edge Innovation, Technology Agnostic, Results-Focused Capabilities, and Advanced Integration”. UDLITARCAI?
Please can we stop all this Arbitrary Acronym Abuse (or AAA)? In my opinion people who spend time coming up with this sort of thing are a bunch of Completely Unnecessary Neologism-obsessed… Persons.
Checkout the management team of the company…
http://www.successfactors.com/company/management/
It has 27 VP level people and above. The company did about 30 mil in
revenues and made 10MM in losses.
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=SFSF
This will become a penny stock shortly. I cannot believe how top heavy this
can be.
Well, according to Reuters, SuccessFactors is “the unprofitable maker of web-based performance management software.”
http://tinyurl.com/2lo4vp
Then again, if you look at the system architecture:
http://tinyurl.com/2tff59
and consider how many people must have been working their tailends off to make version 71 happen, it’s probably more reasonable to expect a profit in a year or two.
We use Promantek and we’re happy with the results. http://www.promantek.com