SuccessFactors Appoints Kara Wilson as Chief Marketing Officer

SAN MATEO, Calif., Aug. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- SuccessFactors, Inc., (NYSE: SFSF) the global leader in cloud-based business execution software, today announced the appointment of Kara Wilson as chief marketing officer (CMO), effective Aug. 8. A seasoned technology marketing executive, Wilson will oversee global marketing and communications as SuccessFactors continues its fast-paced growth trajectory.

"SuccessFactors is clearly at a tipping point in global demand for our offerings and brand awareness," said Lars Dalgaard, founder and CEO of SuccessFactors. "We have outperformed everyone else in software in growth rates sequentially for 10 quarters and the market we have created is still largely unsaturated. Kara is just the right person to maximize these opportunities. She has both category defining experience from her years at PeopleSoft during the hyper-growth era, as well as mega-scale marketing expertise from her time at Cisco. Most of all, we shared a superb connection during our very first meeting that convinced me Kara has the passion, talent and charisma to excel within the SuccessFactors organization."

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.

"SuccessFactors is a compelling software company in a rapidly growing market," said Wilson. "We have a distinct value proposition and an amazing track record of success in assisting companies of all sizes create great workplaces and motivate their people to achieve stellar business results. And there is still so much for us to accomplish. I'm delighted to join the SuccessFactors team, and I'm looking forward to helping drive even broader adoption of our solutions."

Wilson joins SuccessFactors from Cisco where she served as vice president of marketing for the company's communications and collaboration portfolio. She was also a member of Cisco's Collaboration Executive Board, which included development, sales, marketing, services, operations and other functional areas. Prior to Cisco, Wilson was CMO at Network General, where she led the company's global marketing strategy, branding and corporate communications. Before Network General, Wilson was group vice president of marketing communications at PeopleSoft. She has also held leadership positions at Sybase and Arthur Andersen. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and a sports enthusiast.

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
[email protected]

SOURCE SuccessFactors, Inc.