By Hilary Salazar, Community Manager

Free grilled chicken at KFC. Free tote bag with purchase. Free samples at Costco. Free….conference? Now THAT is rare.

Each year, SuccessFactors hosts our user conference with our customers from around the globe. Last year, we had tremendous attendance at our conference in San Francisco. But this year, we’re changing it up. For the first time, SuccessConnect is coming to 4 different cities—San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Melbourne. And—it’s completely free this year! Yes, I too am pleasantly surprised.

To quote our CEO, Lars Dalgaard:

In an effort to meet the needs of our customers and this ever changing economic environment, SucccessFactors has made two important changes to our customer conference. First, we are bringing our customer conference to you! We realize that in times like these travel budgets are tight and every penny counts. Secondly, each event will be one and a half days of fantastic content for FREE! We plan to deliver as we always do with customer lead sessions, ask the experts, product demonstrations, executive 1:1 meetings, industry breakouts, networking time and much more. This is unprecedented in a time like this, but we know how important it is for you to have the opportunity to listen, learn and share with your peers in this environment.

So despite tough times, we wanted to make sure that this important event was accessible to more customers across all regions and industries. With a record number of submissions for presentations by our diverse and global customer base, we are excited to still bring this event to our growing customer base. “What are the dates?” you ask?

San Francisco, CA - June 8 - 9, 2009
Chicago, IL - June 15 - 16, 2009
New York, NY - June 18 - 19, 2009
Melbourne, Australia - August 13 - 14, 2009

In each city, you can take advantage of all you have come to know about SuccessConnect, from industry keynotes to customer lead sessions; from product and partner demonstrations to ask the experts; from industry breakouts to networking galore. And, as usual, we are adding some new and exciting parts to SuccessConnect Local. We will be offering one-on-one meetings with our executive team throughout the event. If you want to spend 20 minutes with a SuccessFactors executive to get to know our business better or share your company goals, we will assist in setting up the appropriate meeting for your needs.

Learn more and sign up today!

By Liz Gaither, Marketing and Event Manager

SuccessFactors recently attended the SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) National Conference, where we were able to meet and mingle with over 15,000 HR professionals from all over the world. SFSF was represented by 20 employees, a 20×20 booth on the show floor, and countless numbers of customers and partners at the event. Over 300 attendees stopped by the tradeshow booth in order to see a demo of our products for the first time, meet with a specific sales rep, ask questions about current implementations, or just to say hello as an existing, HAPPY customer!

The SHRM audience heard from keynote speakers such as Sidney Poitier, who spoke about the importance of diversity and motivating people to make a difference in the world, to Patrick Lencioni, author of books such as The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, who talked about the importance of making any job more rewarding and fulfilling for managers and employees alike.

All in all, the conference was a success with great content and ample time to work with attendees on the expansive show floor. The SHRM organization draws HR professionals from companies of all sizes, but this tends to be a show that many mid-sized and smaller organizations are sure to attend, because there is always something from every arena of HR in the room. We will continue to support and work with SHRM on events throughout the year!

By Giovanni Bacigalupi, Lead User Interface Designer

Two weeks after SuccessConnect, the User Interface team continues to reap the benefits of customer visits to our usability lab, which was located in a room at the SuccessFactors product booth room. There was a constant stream of SuccessFactors customers who kindly gave us 20 minutes to an hour of their conference time. The team came away with notes, screen recordings, videotapes of each session, and a list of folks keenly interested in participating in future testing. We gathered useful data to improve existing and future designs, and the lab itself served as a tangible manifestation of the company’s belief in making usable tools.

This was a first-of-its-kind event for the UI (User Interface) team, and we’re happy to report that we had:

* 7 customers pre-registered for sessions

* 16 customers who participated in the testing

* 8 tests chosen as finalists from an original pool of 18

* A target of 5 sessions per test

* By the end of the conference, 27 sessions were run on 6 different tests

The SuccessFactors UI team has conducted research before, but this was the first time a lab had been set up at a conference venue, and the first time so many team members talked to this many customers within a two-day period. UI team members participating in the lab activities included: Giovanni Bacigalupi, Brigitte Chan, Douglas Lee, Yenly Ma, Daniel Mark, Andrew Wong, and Jimmy Wu. Each took turns in the three roles for the conference: Host (greeted/screened customers outside lab door); Moderator (conducted tests); and Note Taker.

How did it work? The Traveling Usability Lab consisted of a video camera and two computers. One computer was for the participant and the Moderator, while the other was used for taking notes. The video camera provided backup documentation for all the online sessions, and was the primary record for the test involving a card sort. The Moderator walked each participant through one or more of the 20-minute tests.

The future for the Traveling Usability Lab is to have an even better experience at the next SuccessConnect. Until then, the UI team will continue testing from the office with remote users and periodic customer site visits. There is still plenty of data that needs to be gathered for the tests left over from the pool of 18. The existing conferencing tools can be leveraged so the team can test customers anywhere in the world. The SuccessFactors Community site also provides opportunities for future testing activities–so stay tuned!

Thank you to all those who participated!

By Hilary Terrell, Community Manager

I admit—I’m not just a SuccessConnect newbie, but a conference newbie as well. So coming into SuccessConnect, I was eager to see how these three days would unfold and all of the interactions and learning that would take place. With customers and employees coming together from all over the globe, it’s sure to be SuccessFactors’ most important event of the year. It’s been quite an experience—and isn’t over yet!

I’m writing live from the product demo booth are of the conference, where customers and prospects can see live demos of any of our products. The energy here has been fantastic, so I couldn’t help but share some of that here on HappyFactors.

At each product booth, customers are watching live demos of any of our products—from Performance Management to Analytics & Reporting. Our Product Managers are right here, each day of the conference, answering any questions—whether a customer is experiencing a problem with a product they already have, or want to learn more about a new module they’re interested in. Customers are also demoing their instance of the product, so that other customers can learn how from the way they are utilizing the product. It’s been wonderful to watch their customer’s expressions as they watch all of this.

As the Community Manager, I’ve been giving demos of the Customer Community at one of the product booths. For those that aren’t familiar with the Community, this is a website exclusively for our customers and contains everything from training materials and a robust knowledgebase, to active discussion forums and our IdeaFactory, where customers can submit and vote on product enhancements. While giving walkthroughs of Community to customers and prospects, I’ve had the chance to put faces with numerous members of our Community. And with over 7,000 members on the Community right now, this opportunity was incredibly valuable. Watching all of these interactions throughout the conference, it’s clear just how much value these one-on-one connections hold here. The people who I showed the community to now know exactly who they’re communicating with when they contact the community team with a question. The customers and prospects who watched a product demo at other booths now personally know the incredibly hard working Product Managers that are working on each of our products, and the people who they’re directing their questions to in the future. Customers have now witnessed first-hand the energy and passion of our CEO, Lars Dalgaard. Company names that we see every day finally have faces associated with them, and customers now have a better grasp of our company culture as so many of our employees are in attendance. Without a doubt, any conference of this size is large chunk of change (for the host or attendees), not to mention the months and months of planning—but it’s clear that these one to one interactions are what help to create stronger relationships between SuccessFactors and our customers and prospects, and that is invaluable.

If you’re a current customer, I hope you can join us for a future SuccessConnect. And if you’re considering purchasing SuccessFactors, I have no doubt that attending one of these events will seal the deal.

Top quotes overheard at SuccessConnect:

“I love the energy of your company.”

“What a wonderful event—and what a great location to have it.”

“We’ve been a customer for 7 years and look forward to seeing what other tricks [SuccessFactors] has up its sleeves.”

“Great presentation.”

“Oh hell yes!” (customer’s response to being asked by the product testing team if they would use the functionality to be able to do nominations without using a form)

“ ULTRA is smoother, looks better, and is more intuitive.”