By Mary Poppen
Professional Services Practice Manager

My path to SuccessFactors has been a unique one–I have had the distinct pleasure of being both a customer and an employee of SuccessFactors. I believe this dual perspective provides me with a very special view of the SuccessFactors culture and mission, which I wanted to share with all of you.

As one of SuccessFactors’ first 25 customers (we now have 1750+!), I had no idea how lean the organization was until about two years into our contract. When I learned that they had just 12 employees upon our implementation, I was amazed. How could 12 people provide the kind of service and product that we were being provided? SuccessFactors was like no other vendor I had ever worked with. The implementation was extremely smooth and fast, the support team was extremely responsive and ready to jump on any issue that arose, and engineering was releasing enhancements every month that continued to make the product more incredible and applicable to our business processes. Being a customer of SuccessFactors was definitely more of a strategic partnership than the traditional vendor-customer relationship.

After four years as a customer, I decided that the people and products at SuccessFactors were really the place for me. I joined the SuccessFactors team in October of 2005 as a Professional Services Consultant, implementing the software for organizations of all sizes and industries. It didn’t take long for me to realize I had made the best career move of my life. The people, the customers, the leadership, the product…a culture like no other I have ever experienced! What makes it so incredible? Here are just a few reasons:

• Sincere, genuine, daily emails from a CEO who is extremely proud of the team and the product—whether it’s a spontaneous email celebrating customer go-lives; congratulating product managers and engineers on a challenging issue that was resolved; or following a customer experience and educating the company so others can learn and grow;
• Colleagues who will drop everything to assist with an issue because a customer is planning to go-live with our product the next day;
• Colleagues from all areas of the organization who will respond to a plea for help or a question day or night;
• Collaboration across sales, services, product management, engineering and marketing to ensure alignment on new and existing offerings;
• Innovations to remain an exciting, cutting-edge software company that recognizes that the software must change and transform with business needs to be truly valuable;
• The opportunity to learn something new every day (literally) and the chance to apply it as quickly as it is learned;

These are just a few of the things that make SuccessFactors a truly unique company, and just a few of the reasons why I feel so lucky to be here! And what’s more, all of these things don’t just provide value to the employees here; what goes on behind the scenes makes us all the more effective for our customers as well.