- quick in making decisions
- open in sharing so our customers and partner do know what we will do
- proactive in reaching out to the influencers and press with rich content and open for all questions and answers
We do thank you for this feedback, it is very encouraging for this team that worked hard on the topics once we were allowed to share and collaborate more intensively.
This is just the start, as we will communicate more as soon as we have it baked, but we firmly believe it is important to push back on marketing-ish pasturing of evident problems in strategy, product overlap and needed decisions.
After all this acquisition is all about growth and acceleration, not about consolidation. We would like to call this a merger. Our customers and partners will win.
Here they come:
What are your short, mid-term and long-term goals as joint companies?
We want to immediately accelerate our leadership in the HCM market, across all consumption models (whether on-premise with SAP ERP HCM, or in the Cloud with SuccessFactors BizX…). In that context we are working and co-innovating closely with our customers on the integration of our products so we can offer them end-to-end solutions, from strategic workforce planning, to talent management, to employee administration, to workforce analytics in real-time.
We are also accelerating the development of Employee Central, tapping into more than 25 years of SAP experience in core HR.
In the short term we are also working with full speed to define how we can best combine our companies into the new Cloud powerhouse – so that we can meet our long term objective of being #1 in the Cloud by 2017.
Where do you see your advantages compared to competitors?
Together we are a providing a unique combination of strengths, and here are just some of the most important ones we do see.
What SuccessFactors brings:
- Leadership in Cloud HCM solutions (Talent Management, Workforce Planning & Analytics and more…)
- Leadership in the Cloud by numbers of users (15M+ subscribed users… already #1 in the cloud by users)
- 100% Cloud DNA
What SAP brings:
- +183,000 customers
- Strong partner ecosystem of e.g. more than 1,700 services partners
- Business process/ domain expertise across all lines of business and industries
- Leadership in enterprise applications, mobile, in-memory technology
What we jointly will offer:
True end-to-end solutions for lines of business, across consumption models (cloud, on-premise), leveraging collaborative, analytical / in-memory and mobile capabilities, delivered in consumer-grade user experience to make all employees love work again and in turn make our customers best-run businesses.
Is SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors an indication that we aren’t meeting the goals?
No. This acquisition is about accelerating our ambitions in the cloud. Our goal remains the same: to be the leader in the Cloud.
SuccessFactors is already the Cloud leader measured by subscribed users (15M+), with the top-selling solutions in the fastest growing market segment – Cloud HCM. SuccessFactors has a unique business model and depth of experience building cloud applications and bringing them to market quickly.
The SAP OnDemand team has a broad and deep portfolio covering a full suite for the Cloud, game-changing Line of Business OnDemand solutions for virtually every department outside of HR, and collaboration solutions for businesses and people.
With the combination of SuccessFactors and SAP we have a great foundation to accelerate our joint Cloud business.
How will you manage to keep SuccessFactors separate and still have a joint cloud unit lead by Lars Dalgaard?
As stated in our announcement, Lars will lead the cloud business of SAP in addition to his responsibility as CEO of SuccessFactors. We are confident that we will have the right mix of independence and synergies under his leadership.
Why did you decide to stop developing SAP Career OnDemand?
While CareerOD was built based on the concepts of people centric approach, social networking and collaboration it was fundamentally a SaaS-based performance management and career development solution, which overlaps with SuccessFactors.
While SAP Career OnDemand will not be brought to market as a standalone product, we continue to feel strongly that people centricity, social networking and collaboration will fundamentally change the future of talent management processes.
Therefore the learning’s, concepts, prototypes, co-innovation customers and other assets will be embedded into the future roadmap of the talent products going forward.
We hope this helps to further clarify some questions you might have, we do enjoy the fact focused comments and questions we do get, and we are happy to work on the answers – fast. We of course do see some biased color commentary from some competitors, but this just motivates us to make a difference here and keep on our course – make our customers the best-run business and accelerating our delivery.
Let us know what you think. Regards Sven Denecken (@SDenecken)
Related articles
- SAP’s Bold Move with SuccessFactors: Lots of Work to Do (downes.ca)
- Needed to share this here, very powerful: #SuccessFactors Partners on #SAP Acquisition (blogs.sap.com)
- News Analysis: SAP and SuccessFactors Unveil Early Roadmap for HCM(nextgeninsights.com)
- SAP and SuccessFactors Roadmap Analysis (cloudave.com)
- SAP lays out product direction after SuccessFactors deal (infoworld.com)
- After Closing $3.4B Acquisition Of SuccessFactors, SAP Pushes Human Capital Management In The Cloud (techcrunch.com)
- SAP Lays out Product Direction Post-SuccessFactors Deal (pcworld.com)
- Post-acquisition, SAP and SuccessFactors outline where marriage is headed(venturebeat.com)
