Ten Surefire Reasons Why More and More Companies Choose SuccessFactors Every Day (Part 2)

Here’s the second blog that covers why more and more companies choose SuccessFactors every day. As a recap, in my previous blog I wrote about

1. It’s like a Swiss Army knife.

2. It works.

3. The sky is the limit.

Now on to the next couple reasons:

4. It is smart.

“There is no substitute for knowledge.” – what American statistician W. Edwards Deming said in the 20^th century couldn’t be more valid today. In today’s world where we’re all at risk drowning in data, it’s all about creating the right insights that have real impact on business results.

Being a ‘casual’ business user myself I find it especially appealing that I don’t have to fiddle with defining the right metrics or, even worse, trying to interpret data correctly – all this is being taken care of by SuccessFactors through standardized metric definitions, in-app guidance and best practices. Add to that built-in benchmarks that help measure against peer organizations, now I can finally take the guesswork out of HR.

If that isn’t enough, you can switch gears and look ahead into the future by using what-if scenarios to model, predict and plan your future workforce requirements based on your business strategy.

5. Users actually like to use it.

Whether you consider yourself a digital native or digital immigrant, chances are you take it for granted that software solutions are simple and easy-to-use. Social media platforms, online shopping websites and search engines have taught us that software can be easy and fun to use, no matter if you’re in front of your desktop computer or using your tablet or mobile on the road. And why should enterprise solutions be any different? They should not. This is why SuccessFactors solutions were built with the end user in mind – folks like you and me who come into their work and expect that updating their employee records or taking an online learning course is as easy and fun as posting a status update on Facebook, finding and ordering a book on Amazon or using Google Express to order from multiple retailers and have it all delivered to your doorstep.

So, why do users actually like to use SuccessFactors solutions?

• First and foremost, it’s about modern, clean user interfaces. They’re easy to navigate, requiring minimal effort while provoking a response from the interface that is perfectly predictable.
• Secondly, thousands and thousands of so called ‘content elements’ make the users’ lifes so much easier. These could be job catalogs, smart goals, writing assistants, legal scan, etc.
• Thirdly, it’s fully mobile. Let’s face it- everything is mobile. More than 1.3B workers will use some form of mobile technology in 2015. And when more and more consumers take a multi-device path to purchase, why should HR not be mobile? Taking a learning course while on the road? Sign me up! Manage my goals plans and progress on my tablet, request time off on my mobile phone? It just makes sense! And it’s completely secure, too.
• And last but not least it’s about collaboration between people. With SuccessFactors it has become incredibly easy to find experts across the company, communicate, share knowledge, and collaborate on projects.

6. It is a Global Village.

“The World Is Flat”, a term coined by Thomas Friedman in his bestselling book in 2005, hits home what we’re experiencing every day: Businesses are going global and expand into new geographies, be it to produce goods and services or be it to sell them. What businesses often underestimate is the enormous complexity for HR that comes with globalizing a business: Not only does HR software need to be translated into new languages- that is pretty straightforward, and few changes are required over time, if any. What’s more interesting (i.e. challenging from a software perspective) is proper globalization and, even more so, localization:

• Support for multiple time zones, multiple currencies, global fields (e.g. national ID’s, address formats, etc.) – all this falls under ‘globalization’. As of right now, SuccessFactors Employee Central offers this for 71 countries. For Payroll, SuccessFactors has you covered in 30 countries.
• ‘Localization’ is the most demanding area in terms of providing proper coverage in multiple countries: Staying on top of regulatory changes and making sure that our HR solutions stay compliant all the time. With over 1,500 regulatory changes captured and implemented every year, the list of changes is truly mind-boggling – ranging from country-specific mandatory fields, validation rules, business rules, compliance reporting, etc), to local payroll rules for a global payroll engine.

Even beyond legal compliance, our global footprint allows us to learn from countries which are particularly successful in certain business practices and build global solutions based on this experience. Here are a few examples: Data privacy (UK), Grievance handling (IN), Onboarding apprentices (DE), Gender diversity (NO, SE), Succession management (FR), Global benefits, etc.

Stay tuned for part 3 of this series where I’ll be covering

7. At your Service.

8. We’re in our Prime.

9. Businesses follow the Law of Attraction.

10. Because They say so.