SuccessFactors Appoints Dr. Karie Willyerd as Chief Learning Officer

SAN MATEO, Calif., Oct. 12, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- SuccessFactors, Inc., (NYSE: SFSF) the global leader in cloud-based business execution software, today announced the promotion of Dr. Karie Willyerd to chief learning officer (CLO) from her previous role as vice president of learning and social adoption.  Willyerd first joined SuccessFactors in March 2011 through the company's acquisition of Jambok. A seasoned industry leader, Willyerd will oversee the company's Learning Services group, which provides formal and informal learning solutions for customers, partners and employees.

"SuccessFactors has always been about talent. We provide solutions that help organizations attract, align, develop and retain the talent that will help them win in the marketplace," said Doug Dennerline, president of SuccessFactors. "Our company has continuously been one of the fastest growing SaaS companies in the world and we believe in drinking our own champagne to elevate the performance of our team. Karie has already added a lot to SuccessFactors with the revolutionary technology behind Jambok, and I know her award-winning expertise and leadership will be just the right fit to take us to the next level."

Celebrating its 10-year anniversary this year, SuccessFactors is one of the most widely deployed cloud-based business software applications in the market. In June, SuccessFactors completed its acquisition of Plateau Systems, creating the broadest software-as-a-service (SaaS) human capital management (HCM) suite in the market with approximately 15 million subscription seats.

"What excites me about this new role within SuccessFactors is that I get to use some of the best applications on the planet to support how we develop our people," said Willyerd.  "As an industry leader, SuccessFactors attracts phenomenal talent. I've always wanted to help a company develop its people through a big growth curve, and now I finally get that chance. I am excited about the opportunities ahead as we continue to scale and grow."

Willyerd is an industry veteran and the former CLO for Sun Microsystems, where she led a team that won more than 30 awards from 2008 through 2010, including the ASTD No. 1 training department in the world. She is also the co-author of The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow's Employees Today (http://www.the2020workplace.com/). Willyerd has a doctorate from Case Western Reserve, a master's from Boise State, and a bachelor's from Texas Christian.  She splits her time between San Francisco and Fort Collins, Colorado.

About SuccessFactors

SuccessFactors is the leading provider of cloud-based Business Execution Software, which delivers business alignment, team execution, people performance, and learning management solutions to organizations of all sizes across more than 60 industries. With approximately 15 million subscription seats globally, we strive to delight our customers by delivering innovative solutions, content and analytics, process expertise and best practices insights from serving our broad and diverse customer base. Today, we have more than 3,500 customers in more than 168 countries using our application suite in 34 languages.

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"Safe harbor" statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are SuccessFactors' current expectations and beliefs.

These forward-looking statements include statements about future growth prospects, financial results and benefits of acquisitions. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements include: our ability to retain customers and to experience high customer renewal rates; whether customers renew their agreements for additional modules or users; pricing pressures; the uncertain impact of the overall global economic conditions, including on customers, prospective customers and partners, renewal rates and length of sales cycles; the fact that the business execution market is at an early stage of development, and may not develop as rapidly as we anticipate; risks related to the integration of the acquisitions, including retaining customers and employees, unforeseen liabilities and managing geographically-dispersed operations; competitive factors; outages or security breaches; our ability to develop, and market acceptance of, new services; the impact of any discovered product defects or outages; our ability to continue to sell our services outside the HR area; our ability to manage our growth; our ability to successfully expand our sales force and its effectiveness; whether our resellers and other partners will be successful in marketing our products; our ability to continue to manage expenses; and the impact of unforeseen expenses, including as a result of integrating acquisitions. If any such risks or uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions prove incorrect, our results could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements we make.

Further information on these and other factors that could affect these forward-looking statements is included in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and in other filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time.

For media inquiries:
Andrea Meyer
+1.415.370.7329
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SOURCE SuccessFactors, Inc.