SuccessConnect Wishlist Part 2: Increased Commitment to Incorporate Customer Feedback

SuccessConnect is just around the corner. For the second year, I’m going to provide my wishlist of things I want to hear addressed by SuccessFactors. Part 1 covered the future of payroll. In today's article, we address the SuccessFactors Influence Program.

It’s a not-so-well-kept secret that SAP has never been well known for systematically taking customer feedback and incorporating in its products. In the past, this has served the product reasonably well because SAP's world-class system engineers were able to focus on their own vision of how the product best would work as a fully integrated solution. Customers could then enhance the product themselves where necessary. 

When SAP acquired SuccessFactors, it touted that part of the reason for the high purchase price was to get their “cloud DNA”.  However, this is one area where the practices of the acquiring company holds sway. David Bahn wrote an excellent article How Influential Is SAP Influence details how few SAP enhancement requests submitted via its influence site actually were making it into the product.

But that is for SAP overall, what is the track record in SuccessFactors Employee Central, the area where I focus? I did an analysis similar to David's and my results are similar. Note that this analysis was done back in February so it's possible that these numbers have improved, although from watching this program closely I do not think there would be significant change one way or another.

2016 Employee Central Influence Requests

412 submitted, 46 were delivered (11%). 

27 Requests hitting hit the 10-vote threshold with  6 delivered (22%)

2017 Employee Central Influence Requests

896 submitted, 59 were delivered or accepted (7%). 

77 hit the 10 vote threshold, 9 were delivered or accepted (12%)

2018 Employee Central Influence Requests

1019 submitted, 27 delivered (3%),

116 hit the 10 vote threshold, 27 delivered/accepted/added to roadmap (23%)

A cloud-based solution that is not heavily committed to incorporating customer feedback in a systematic way is asking for trouble, especially because customers simply cannot put in their own fixes for issues with the product the way they can in an on-premise world.  Think of on-premise as a yacht and the cloud as a cruise ship. With a yacht, you can always augment to your heart’s content (and deal with it yourself when your change doesn't work out the way you want!), but on a cruise ship, you are at the mercy of the cruise line’s investment. Passengers on a cruise ship can’t put in a climbing wall themselves when they’re trying to get in shape.  It’s the same thing in a cloud, multitenant environment. If you’ve reached the limit of what SuccessFactors will allow, you have to live with it.

From speaking with customers, there is palpable frustration in this area as they feel that their efforts submitting requests and lobbying other companies are futile. As the analysis above bears out, it’s evident that the budgets for incorporating customer feedback in SuccessFactors simply aren’t there. The problem is made worse by an SAP Influence Site that is shall we say “creative” in how it counts the totals. (To be fair to the SuccessFactors team, the influence site is operated by SAP, so SuccessFactors cannot change how the site operates.) If a customer puts in a suggestion that happens to already be in the product, that suggestion immediately goes into the delivered column without any action actually being taken. This inflates the “delivered” numbers on the front page. The creativity continues with the enhancements themselves, where requests that have hit votes thresholds are routinely statused as “acknowledged” for quarter after quarter rather than dispositioned.  

On a personal level, I have also felt a lot of frustration with this program. Over the past two years, I spent a lot of time encouraging customers to participate.  I have a weekly Employee Central newsletter, and I have highlighted one enhancement request per week in hopes of increasing awareness in the program. I have also reached out to customers to get them to vote on other customers requests and pushed everyone to log in and check the requests at least monthly. However, when nothing really seemed to be produced by the program quarter after quarter, I eventually elected to stop encouraging participation in the program.  I didn’t want to waste customers' time. Plus, I don’t feel that SuccessFactors is well served by creating false hope in customers when the reality is that changes were not likely to be incorporated. 

To continue with the cruise ship analogy, this ship won’t be able to switch courses on a dime.  SuccessFactors needs to fundamentally rethink the role that enhancements play in the product. Influence request process should be a key piece of the product development strategy. SuccessFactors can commit to increasing the budgets devoted to customer enhancement requests.  It should also ensure that specific requests get incorporated every quarter and that these are highlighted as customer contributions. Doing so will make sure that we all have a great time as we cruise the world on the S.S. SuccessFactors.