Dennis Howlett theorizes about possible controls issues and what is going on with SuccessFactors revenue vis a vis SAP's reported Q2 results. When I looked at SAP's reported 2nd quarter results, it seemed that something was fishy. SAP reported strong growth for SuccessFactors on non-standard measures like "12-month subscription billings from new business" but when it came to revenue SAP only compared total SAP Q2/2012 revenue (69€ million) with SAP Q2/2011 revenue (4€ million pre-SuccessFactors). Year-over-year comparisons of SuccessFactors revenue were avoided.

Given growth of SAP's homegrown Business ByDesign solution, there was some reason to believe that SuccessFactors reported revenue may even have been down year-over-year. Howlett is much more qualified than I when it comes to recognizing and investigating these types of issues, and he shines a spotlight on some behind the scenes reasons that these numbers may have fallen out the way they did.