12-Year Cisco Corporate Development Integration Veteran Judy Blegen Joins SuccessFactors as Vice President of M&A Integration

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Feb 04, 2010, 04:04 ET

SAN MATEO, Calif., Feb. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SuccessFactors, Inc. (Nasdaq: SFSF) today announced that Judy Blegen has joined the company as vice president of M&A integration.

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Judy Blegen brings SuccessFactors more than a decade of experience in mergers and acquisitions, corporate development and in particular, business integration operations. In her role at SuccessFactors, Blegen will join the company's corporate development team headed up by Seksom Suriyapa, SuccessFactors' vice president of Corporate Development, who leads the company's strategic acquisitions and investments.

Judy Blegen joined SuccessFactors after her 12-year tenure at Cisco as operations director and chief of staff for the SVP of corporate development and consumer. During her time at Cisco, Blegen provided operational leadership to Cisco's $800M global consumer business including planning and business operations reviews. Blegen also lead operations for all Corporate Development activities including venture investments and mergers and acquisitions during a period where Cisco grew their investment portfolio to $1.3B and completed 53 acquisitions totaling over $17B that significantly contributed to Cisco's top line growth. Blegen has held human resources management positions at Bodine Electric, Unilever Corporation and National Medical Enterprises.

"For three years, we have been looking for the right acquisitions, and not found any that were important or right, until now. A year ago, we hired Seksom Suriyapa, who, as a lawyer and banker, has had the right balance to make sure that when we had $100M in cash -- and now over $300M in cash -- we didn't do anything to destroy, but only accelerate our industry leading growth," said Lars Dalgaard, founder and CEO of SuccessFactors. "As SuccessFactors continues to aggressively grow, very selective M&A will continue to be a part of that strategy as it relates to the three criteria we set up in 2007: furthering our technology, increasing our content offerings and geographic presence to improve business execution world-wide for any size company. We've had our work cut out for us, because a lot of companies want to be bought by an industry leader. Seksom has hired an outstanding team, both on the front and back end, to make sure we have enough bandwidth to understand the businesses in detail, and run down every negative and positive indicator, and make the right decisions to protect our future value creation for our customers, prospects, colleagues and investors."

Continued Dalgaard, "When we make these type of high priority growth decisions, we need to be strategic and precise on how these get integrated, and Judy will be key to that. We have truly enjoyed seeing the Cisco excellence applied by Judy in our first acquisition; it's a pleasure to see her execute and immediately demand the respect from internal and new colleagues, and drive the tight ship for success. She brings years of experience with a large, successful company to the table and we're excited to have her leadership and guidance."

"It's very exciting to be joining a company like SuccessFactors at a time when it's on an incredible growth curve and carving out industry leadership," Blegen said. "As SuccessFactors opportunistically takes advantage of selective M&A, follow-through will be instrumental to staying focused on maintaining the high organic growth SuccessFactors has become known for. I'll be able to put my experience to work to really make a difference at the company."

SuccessFactors recently unveiled its cloud-based Business Execution (BizX) Software Suite, which enables companies to bridge the gap between strategy and execution. The Business Execution Software Suite empowers the C-level and human resources professionals alike to tie the performance of their people directly to overall business goals and execute more effectively every day.

About SuccessFactors, Inc.

SuccessFactors is the global leader in Business Execution Software. The SuccessFactors Business Execution Suite improves business alignment and people performance to drive breakthrough results for companies of all sizes, anywhere in the world. More than 6 million users and 3,000 companies leverage SuccessFactors every day. To learn more, visit: www.successfactors.com.

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