 "Salesforce.com To Acquire Rypple")
Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company, has announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Rypple, a cloud-based social performance management company. The acquisition signifies salesforce.com’s entry into the human capital management (HCM) market for the social enterprise. Salesforce.com plans to re-launch Rypple as “Successforce” and create a new HCM business unit, which will be run by John Wookey. Rypple’s unique social technologies will also extend the value of salesforce.com’s existing core products. The transaction is expected to close in salesforce.com’s fiscal first quarter ending April 30, 2012, subject to customary closing conditions.
“Salesforce.com and Rypple share a vision for extending the social enterprise to transform the way we work,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “The next generation of HCM is not just about a cloud delivery model, it’s about a fundamentally better way to recruit, manage and empower employees in a social world.”
“Our social enterprise strategy continues to accelerate, and is at the root of the broad-based transformation and innovation we are seeing from customers today,” said John Wookey, executive vice president, advanced applications, salesforce.com. “With the launch of Successforce, salesforce.com plans to revolutionise HCM starting with an exciting social performance management app that will delight millions of employees around the world.”
“Rypple was designed from the start to be fun, social, and mobile–an app that can delight managers and employees in entirely new ways,” said Daniel Debow, co-CEO and co-founder, Rypple. “As the leading social enterprise company with more than 100,000 customers worldwide, salesforce.com will allow us to not only strengthen our offering for the hundreds of high-performing organisations that use Rypple today, but also scale it to reach many more.”
Traditional HCM software that many businesses use today was designed 30 years ago for personnel departments whose goal was to minimise the cost and risk of employing people. While HCM software hasn’t changed in decades, the way people work has radically changed.
Today’s workforce demands new performance and leadership tools that are completely transparent and allow employees to be connected to their company’s mission and each other. Social enterprises and progressive HR leaders are embracing apps like Rypple, which focus on the inherent social nature of performance management—goal setting, feedback, recognition and continuous dialogue—to help employees align more effectively around the company mission.
The acquisition of Rypple and its planned re-launch as Successforce signify salesforce.com’s entry into the HCM market. The company plans to expand into other areas with a new social model that will revolutionise the way companies recruit talent, build teams, empower employees and achieve results.
The new HCM business unit, including Successforce, will be led by John Wookey, salesforce.com’s executive vice president of advanced applications. Wookey comes to salesforce.com with more than 20 years of experience in enterprise software, including senior leadership positions at Oracle and SAP.
With this acquisition, salesforce.com will embed some of Rypple’s next-generation features into its existing products. For example, people will be able to thank colleagues, win badges and provide recognition – all from within Salesforce Chatter. And customers of core Salesforce products - the Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Force.com platform – will be able to connect with new employee feedback tools to help drive business goals and power the future of their employee social networks.
The transaction is expected to close in salesforce.com’s fiscal first quarter ending April 30, 2012, subject to customary closing conditions. The transaction is not expected to have a material impact on revenue for FY13. Salesforce.com will initiate EPS guidance for fiscal 2013 on its fourth quarter conference call in February.