SuccessFactors aims to align individual effort with corporate goals

Stephen Withers
Friday, 11 September 2009 05:04

IT Industry - Market

SaaS provider SuccessFactors believes it has found a way of encouraging employees to pull in the direction set by senior management.

SuccessFactors has been delivering SaaS for performance reviews and other HR-related processes, but a study conducted for the company by a leading management consultancy revealed that large companies wanted workforce performance tools that linked to business execution.

SuccessFactors' new Strategy Deployment software is intended to fill that need.

Murray Sargant, vice president Asia Pacific at SuccessFactors, told iTWire that linking goals and performance can affect people's behaviour and should lead to improved productivity.

Although business intelligence (BI) vendors claim to address business execution, they generally rely on ERP and other legacy data which lags too much. Executives know this is important, but they also need leading indicators, he said.

Strategy Deployment - part of SuccessFactors' Business Execution (BizX) suite - allows senior executives to turn long-term goals and high-level strategies into specific goals for individual managers, which are then linked to compensation packages.

This cascades down the organisation, and even where employees aren't on performance-based compensation the system can link to other forms of recognition.

Where does that get you, and what else is SuccessFactors doing? Please read on.