HR people really count, no matter what other bits of the organisation might think. So declared Jay Larson, SuccessFactors senior vice president, Enterprise, on day one of the Cloud business execution software vendor's European user conference in Barcelona.
Larson was a last minute substitute for the missing SuccessFactors CEO Lars Dalgaard whose last minute absence caused some ripples among the gathered customers and prospects who were clearly left disappointed at missing out on one of the flamboyant Dane's colourful keynotes. As it was, Larson delivered in a more low key style (who wouldn't?), but cogently argued the 'gospel according to Dalgaard'.
This is based around the unifying message that execution is what makes the difference. Essentially, since a repositioning of the firm back in September, what SuccessFactors reckons to do is to take the kind of practices and processes that it has always preached in its performance management background and apply them to all parts of the business, but particularly to senior business decision makers.