By Elaine Wu, Product Marketing Intern, Summer 2008

Hello everyone! I’m Elaine Wu, a product marketing intern finishing up my last week here at SuccessFactors. Over the past two months, I have gotten to experience life as a SuccessFactors employee, and let me tell you–I’ve had an absolutely amazing time. This has been my first office job and I still can’t believe how lucky I am to have worked with such fun and hard-working people. I really hope that all SuccessFactors employees realize how great it is to be working here full-time! For my HappyFactors post, I wanted to highlight some of the many things I learned about this unique company during my time here…

It’s Not Easy being Green, but SuccessFactors is proving how easy it is!

Every UC Berkeley student knows about the lovely group of tree-sitters living atop our oak trees. Rain or shine, you can always find the squatters up in the trees. They have truly made the trees their home, setting up boards for beds and a system of pulleys to bring up food. Although I am not quite willing to forego my comfortable bed for the branch of a tree, I have been touched by the passion of the tree sitters. I believe that every little step someone can take to help the environment is something worth doing.

Kermit the Frog may not have thought that it was easy being green, but SuccessFactors has proven that it is. Our SaaS software does so much more than save our customers money on software maintenance and operation. The computerized performance reviews eliminate thousands of paper-based reviews each year. With every new customer we attain, we are doing our part to save trees.

SuccessFactors does even more for the environment–by supporting employees who wish to work from home, we are preventing unnecessary pollution too! It is great to know that our company supports our efforts to save gas and commute time when we just need a day at home to get work done. And of course working from home would not be possible without our company’s open communication and collaboration with other employees in the office or living overseas. This brings me to my next point:

SuccessFactors meets The Beatles: Come Together, With a Little Help from my Friends, We can Work it Out

SuccessFactors thrives on synergy. Working together with our fellow employees is essential to deliver the best products to our customers. Our open office, cubicle-free environment makes it ideal for team members to work with each other on a project or just get a fresh perspective on an idea. I have also found that it is much easier to stay motivated and concentrate on my work when I notice how hard everyone around me is working. Not only has this open environment kept me more motivated throughout the day, it also gave me a small break when I needed one. Sitting in a high-traffic area of the office has been entertaining! Sometimes I would just listen to all the conversations going on around me. It’s actually quite fascinating to hear how an engineer solved an issue or how a sales representative completed a sale. The random anecdotes and accomplishments I have heard every day keeps me excited about this company. Someone is always doing something worthwhile.

Kaizen-ian Rhapsody

Kaizen (“constant improvement”) is not just something that I heard about on my first day during orientation. It is something that is achieved every single day here. To continuously improve, everyone must question their work. How can I work more efficiently? How can I make our product useful? How can I satisfy our customers? How can I increase worldwide productivity?

I am proud to say that I’ve also experienced the power of Kaizen. I’ve been working on the Customer Community this summer, and it is the one place where both SuccessFactors employees and SuccessFactors customers can learn and grow together. Every Community member wants to make the Community beneficial. Our employees Kaizen the Community to keep our customers updated on all changes in the product as well as address any of the customers’ feedback and concerns. We also encourage our customers to continuously Kaizen by giving them many opportunities to learn and contribute to our product. Customers listen to OneVoice calls hosted by Product Managers, share product ideas in the IdeaFactory, get questions answered in the Discussion Forums, learn from the many training materials online and connect with other SuccessFactors customers through the Community Directory.

Being able to collaborate with our customers to create a product that we are all proud of has been the most satisfying experience. Work really becomes easy and fun when you know that your customers are helping you help them.

Fun, Fun, Fun

Happy workers can bring insurmountable success to any company. Everyone at SuccessFactors lets their creativity inspire the work that they are doing. The Product Marketing workspace area has recently been decorated with an inspiration wall. What inspires you, SuccessFactors?

It’s been so fun to cover the walls with items and pictures that can fire up our imaginations or just make us happy and motivated to work. I brought all the fortunes from fortune cookies that I’ve collected for the past 15 years. I hope that you can find one which inspires you to work harder and achieve any goal. It’s these little things that can make working in this office fun. (Another recent example—check out the photo from a recent team-building outing to race go-karts!)

SuccessFactors succeeds because it realizes that its workers are its most important asset— without happy workers, the company cannot succeed. Well, SuccessFactors has won me over. I have really been inspired by the company’s values as well as all the people I’ve met here. It’s been a great summer! I really hope that every SuccessFactors employee can appreciate the wonderful place where they work as much as I have. How sweet it is (to be loved by my company and to have worked at SuccessFactors!)