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.”