Syndigo & Riversand: Shared Vision, Complementary Capabilities

Here’s How it Can be Better for Our Industry

The recent announcement of Riversand becoming part of Syndigo was exciting news for many of us. Combining Riversand’s expertise in MDM and PIM with Syndigo’s enhanced content, syndication and eCommerce analytics, means that our organizational focus to provide the transfer of information that enables commerce, in the right place at the right time, has never been more complete. Most acquisitions mention combining the best elements of each, and how they will work well as one.

Here are a few things we think will help make things better for our clients and the industry as a whole.

We help untangle the spaghetti chart.

We’ve all seen (or maybe even created), the affectionately named “spaghetti chart”, the presentation slide that sets up the “before” of a complicated data management process across an organization or industry. This tangle is the result of the growth in our computing capabilities as well as the proliferation of information that can be collected. More and more things can be labeled, measured and tracked to ensure efficiency. And solution providers have developed all sorts of applications, systems, platforms and solutions to maximize efficiency along each point in a product’s data journey.

The problem? Today, content is ubiquitous. The challenge still is how to make it most effective. More valuable. If the many ways to define and utilize product information were combined in a comprehensive solution, the challenge of maintaining multiple systems and data sets would be greatly simplified, and it would reduce the number of potential failure points, data duplication or misconnections that can occur across many different pieces.

We serve the entire information journey.

We strongly believe that for all our clients to succeed, we need to deliver solutions and an ecosystem that serve brands, retailers, distributors and affiliate partners. When we speak of being “purpose built”, we mean that we started from scratch in order to re-imagine the Experience Management journey.

Whether it is Product-, Content-, Consumer- or some other type of Experience Management, our platforms – both Syndigo and Riversand – were designed to address the way that information moves, as well as the data itself. We did not build to solve a single product issue, but rather integrate the entire process. This can only be achieved by combining 3 data domains, the customer (who), the product (what), and the location (where). Together, our platforms’ connectivity and capabilities will allow our clients to continue maximizing their information.

We’re a united management team.

The business world is full of quotes on how a great team can do great things. Rowing in the same direction. Aiming high. Lifting everyone up. Let’s not belabor the point. A management team with a shared vision and a relentless focus to execute on it can do great things.

Our vision has remained constant: We seek to enable commerce by supporting the efficient transfer of product information through a network of brands and their customers. And we know that by doing this, we will enable a better end-consumer experience, which benefits our retailer, distributor and supplier clients.

Riversand shares this vision, which is why it is an ideal fit, enhancing the flow of product information together. Combined, we can provide an exclusive suite of services, without the competing priorities or patchwork of multiple point solutions. We’re here, to continue to build and integrate the best capabilities so our clients benefit.

We’re digital native.

Combining two companies, both operating in a SaaS platform environment, offers more speed and flexibility… at scale. Compared to other single purpose point solutions, both Syndigo and Riversand designed our cloud native infrastructure to optimize the way that SaaS can deliver on the promise of the client experience. It’s part of the reason both companies are growing rapidly with new clients…and why we can take on more users, meet changing recipient requirements, and make system upgrades in near real-time based on client content needs.

Real service, not FAQ libraries.

It’s in our culture to deliver great service. It’s also one of the core tenets of the Riversand team. We deliver great client service, bringing people with deep knowledge and expertise together to help clients maximize their content experiences. We’ve received some industry recognition as well – G2, Gartner, Forrester. And we continue to evolve our teams based on meeting client needs.

While we’re on the topic of service, let’s talk Global. Our team covers the US, Canada, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. With local contacts, we’re on the ground in most countries we service.

Culture of innovation

It’s not just that two players with complementary capabilities are now one. We were both built vision-first, to fill a gap in existing provider offerings. Syndigo is the only solution provider with a strong platform that serves both sides of the network (with clients on both sides). In addition to our two-sided platform, we implemented our content readiness capabilities that can score whether content is at an acceptable level by item, by brand or by supplier – for each recipient.

Our ability to create content from physical products (as well as ingest brand created content) is also an important differentiator. This provides both flexibility and control that both sides of the industry require. We have also integrated our GDSN data pool capabilities and enhanced rich media content through same platform, enabling both broad syndication reach and deep analytics capabilities. Plus, our industry-leading Riversand MDM solutions provide even more extensive capabilities across customer, product and location domains.

Comprehensive capabilities

MDM. PIM. DAM. GDSN. UDI. Experience Management. You name it, we likely facilitate it for clients today. Plus, we have the added breadth and depth to syndicate to the largest global network. And then optimize with our analytics reporting. It bears repeating – we are purpose built based on our vision of delivering an end-to-end system for customer experiences that help enable commerce for our clients. It’s not just a collection of technologies, but rather a unified solution based on the process of managing information that eliminates data silos across systems. Bringing the customer, product and location domains under one organization closes the loop and allows for continually fresh, accurate and usable data – across master data, product information, and digital assets such as rich media content.

This is where the industry is headed – greater interconnectivity and connection. Last year’s necessary business pivots accelerated this evolution even faster. And all this has been much easier for our clients when we’re one company. We get rid of costly and risky intermediation of information – there’s no need to choose different providers for content collection, information management, syndication or customer experience. And that’s why we think with Riversand joining Syndigo, we can help our clients manage information better, and sell more!