Corsello wonders what we will do with $45 million. The answer is simple. One huge party. Invites will be sent out by the end of the week.

Not really.

How ‘bout this:
Build a company that continues to get results for our customers. End of story.

The responsibility and accountability we feel towards our customers is something we take very seriously. This isn’t just about numbers to us. We want to add real value. Make organizations more productive and profitable. Help employees get rewarded fairly and attain their personal goals.

As we continue to take on the responsibility of new customers, we want to make sure our ability to deliver on our commitment to them is as solid as with our very first customer. So we’re hiring the best people around to get our customers live quickly and to support them as they navigate the opportunities in, and achieve the benefits of, performance and talent management.

Good people don’t come cheap, but ultimately, they’re the reason that both customers and investors continue to put their faith in us. It may be a little trite to say this in our industry - but for SuccessFactors, it’s all about the people, and they’re worth every penny.

Jason Corsello picks up on our recent research announcement – calling the approach “groundbreaking.”

You can see some early thoughts from SuccessFactors Research as previously posted here. Keep checking back for more of the “From our research” series.

David Berlind on the ‘Between the Lines’ blog at ZDNet tells of the unique pleasure of sitting next to SuccessFactors’ own Marty Pitkow (pictured) on an airplane the other day. And believe it or not, Marty helped him experience a SaaS epiphany.

How, you might ask? Well as it turns out, David was on the way back from the Gartner Symposium where one analyst recommended (link to another ZdNet article) that it was time for companies to “not own, but rent” applications – among some other visionary proclamations. And so David had SaaS on the brain – but talking to Marty drove the point home.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I agree with David’s conclusion – that SaaS is ultimately a no brainer. Here’s an excerpt:

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How many HR related blogs would you guess there are? 21? 77?132? I figured 100 at the most. Apparently I need to get out more  – Michael Specht has a sortable, dynamic list of almost 350 HR blogs. A great resource if you’re new to the blogosphere – or if you’re just a little too wrapped up in your own world – like me.

That’s right. A break. I’m off on vacation for a week. A whole week.  But don’t worry. I’m not going to leave you without things to think about. In my absence, I refer you to the following blogs to keep the mind moving and the ideas coming.

SystematicHR – A comprehensive and compelling blog centered on HR technology but free roaming around all sorts of issues that affect HR practitioners. One of the best around, period – from a guy who knows what he’s talking about. 

HR’s Brand New Experience – Regina covers some of the softer issues in HR, with consistently insightful stuff that has you clicking the subscribe button about 2 seconds after the site loads in your browser.

The Human Capitalist – Jason Corsello of The Yankee Group is one of the most respected analysts in the space. This is his personal blog, so you can find pictures of his dog alongside thoughts penned by one of the guys finding clarity in the ever-changing and sometimes confusing world of performance and talent management.

Software as Services – An unabashed advocate of SaaS, Phil Wainewright highlights some of the obvious (and not so obvious) things to know about Software as a Service and notes the hottest news in the space.

Presentation Zen – We all have to do them, so why not spend some time thinking about new ways of making your stuff pop! Presentation Zen inspires and focuses as it entertains.

Bona tempora volvantur by Guy Kawasaki – After just a few months blogging, he’s already considered one of the most popular bloggers around. The well known venture investor and author brings fresh ideas and perspectives to all kinds of business and workplace issues with his trademark writing style and incisive wit.

You can also take a click-walk through the blogroll on the right, mess around with the poll on the left, and don’t forget the archives. Have a great week!

Enjoy, and I’ll see you soon,
Max

Over the weekend, the NYT (again) tackled the subject of top executive compensation. But this time, they added some cool charts and graphs to illustrate how utterly out of synch pay has become with corporate results.

My favorite is this one which contrasts some of the worst offending companies (where pay went up when a company’s performance went down) with some of the best values in CEOs (where performance went up but pay didn’t keep pace).

As more and more companies move to a system where performance is correlated directly to pay for their employees (as well it should be) it seems only logical that the same would be true for top executives. One would think that a scenario in which employees are denied raises of a few percentage points because the company didn’t have a good year, while the CEO walks off with bundles of cash would make “employee engagement” somewhat of a difficult job.

The Times also questioned the impartiality of compensation consultants in a separate piece, from which I truly enjoyed this particular quote from Warren Buffett:

Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance,” he wrote in his most recent annual report. “The upshot is that a mediocre-or-worse C.E.O. — aided by his handpicked V.P. of human relations and a consultant from the ever-accommodating firm of Ratchet, Ratchet & Bingo — all too often receives gobs of money from an ill-designed compensation arrangement.

Here’s an article at Baseline that talks about some of the ins and outs of talent management applications by showcasing some of the companies that have chosen to implement them. We’re mentioned in there, as are competitors Authoria and Vurv.

My most favorite bit includes a quote from (our customer) Gary Short of Kimberly-Clark:

Human-resources professionals caution, though, that it’s important not to use such systems to replace face-to-face meetings, which are vital for evaluating candidates or reviewing employees. “You want an efficient process,” says Gary Short, senior consultant for talent management at paper-goods maker Kimberly-Clark, “but you want an effective process.”

This hits on something I’ve been thinking about lately – the idea of “conversations.” Technology is an excellent enabler, but I’m moving towards the belief that the real point of any of these HR related applications is to support more and better conversations between people. Results come from conversations.

The technology serves, among other things, to provide the supporting data to enforce a process. But the value will remain in the conversations that take place as a RESULT of the technology. The better, more sophisticated and more usable the technology, the better and more sophisticated the conversations.

Jason Corsello of The Yankee Group (who writes a blog in his spare time and has a nice looking dog called Larry) in his growth forecast for the talent management market says: “”As the workforce becomes increasingly mobile and global, companies that invest in talent management solutions and examine it from a worldwide perspective will reap tremendous benefits for their business organization and operations.”

As such, Jason’s firm is forecasting that the market for talent management applications will be growing by 25% year over year (from $2.3 Billion in 2006)for the next 4 years, reaching $4 Billion by 2009.

That’s some wave.

Interestingly, the release also mentions that while Yankee’s definition of of talent management includes “Recruitment management, performance management, compensation management, succession management, learning management and other (knowledge management, self-service, analytics and reporting),” the market is largely being driven by the “the performance and succession management segments.”

Don’t know if you’ve caught any of Microsoft’s spiffy, new $500 million business-targeted campaign.  Themed “People-Ready” it asks businesses to consider whether they embody that ideal. Or, in other words, whether they have the tools in place to enable their most important resource – their people. Here’s a press release and an article in AdWeek.

The TV spot I saw had a bunch of business people doing business-y things and talking about differentiation. They ask themselves about operations, about marketing, etc. And they find no opportunity for optimization or advantage. Then, they pose a question that goes something like: “so what IS our competitive advantage?” Then one of the business-y guys nods through the glass to the people working at their desks and says “them.”

It’s no surprise that the push is to convince CEOs and the like that “Microsoft technology can help them get their employees to succeed” in the words of the AdWeek article. But my (obviously skewed and probably simplistic) reaction is to wonder if more word-processing software and an upgraded operating system are really what’s going to help drive people to perform.

As a loyal PC user, I’m excited about Windows Vista and the new Office. They look cooler and seem like they will make some computer things easier and more efficient. But will they “get employees to succeed” in ways they haven’t been able to before? Probably not.

It’s very en vogue these days to focus on people. Companies do it in their annual reports, FastCompany’s “Why we hate HR” article spawned volumes of comment and criticism and software vendors like SuccessFactors are gaining popularity as we help organizations manage talent in new ways. “People” is popular in the business world. But let’s take a minute to understand that people + technology can = many different things.

Spreadsheets, databases, operating systems and word processing software help people do tasks better. Talent management software helps organizations do people better. With all the people-talk these days, don’t get confused. Only one type of technology is truly focused on driving success through people. The rest is just marketing.

You may have noticed a poll in the left-hand column over the past couple of weeks. Though clearly not scientific in any way, the poll has provided some insight into what’s on the minds of our readers.

We asked, “What is your most pressing HR issue?” 

We had 50 people respond to the poll, and the results are interesting. Despite all the talk about succession and compensation, the core issue (28%) for our respondents was Performance Reviews followed followed closely by Goal Alignment (24%).

To me, it indicates that Performance Management and Goal Alignment are still the biggest pain points for HR practitioners. They represent the heart of talent management initiatives, and Succession and Comp. are just further down in the hierarchy of HR needs.

I’d be curious to hear what you guys have to say about the results. Do you think they’re generally representative, or are they skewed for some reason?