Comments on: The Acquisition Spree 1

By: Jay Cross

Jay Cross — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:55:00 +0000

Great post, John. Given the fixation with Big Data, the more numbers, the better, eh?

By: Paul Basile

Paul Basile — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:17:00 +0000

This is entertaining. The cultural observations are, in my limited contacts with both companies, pretty accurate. But the real story is that SF has a really good product suite and SAP paid, apparently, the right price for it. But there is a lot more to employee value and performance than technology. Measuring things is nice; getting the results that show the desired targets met more often is better. That’s not tech that’s substance.

By: HRExaminer v2.47 | HR Examiner with John Sumser

HRExaminer v2.47 | HR Examiner with John Sumser — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:57:02 +0000

[...] The Acquisition Spree 1 (SuccessFactors) I’ve spent some time at the SuccessFactors offices in Silicon Valley. Not enough to be a [...]

By: Acquisition Spree 2 | HR Examiner with John Sumser

Acquisition Spree 2 | HR Examiner with John Sumser — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:24:24 +0000

[...] in a series: Whale Eats Fish; Whale Risks Indigestion and Fish Eats Krill (this [...]

By: Martin Snyder

Martin Snyder — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:16:00 +0000

Great piece John- of all the stuff already published on this deal, you connected the dots the best. I have been reading about culture differences between the organizations, but I didn’t get it until now. Superior insight that at bottom, this deal is about “hitting the numbers”, but not merely SAP’s numbers….The derived testosterone at SuccessFactors (probably somehow issued from Larry Ellison) tied to their envelope pushing performance management technology and philosophy perfectly explains the attraction of SAP and the unexpected multiple of the deal.
The most successful third-party search firms that we work with are totally numbers driven operations, sometimes down to the hour. We know that call-centers and manufacturing (as two other examples) have been fully atomized and quantified; moneyball is a powerful religion that will be shaping business more and more dramatically.
As the tycoon whose campus I now work at was known for believing: “Hire em, Tire em, and Fire em”, I think technology that helps reliably do that for managers is going to be very attractive.