Synthesio, Global Social Media Monitoring

New Partnership to Enable Enhanced Social CRM and Engagement Capabilities

Synthesio, a leading provider of global social media monitoring, analysis and engagement solutions, announced today a new partnership with Lithium Technologies, the leader in Social Customer Experience. The partnership aims to unite the unique strengths that each brings to the table, to deliver an enhanced Social CRM platform with industry-leading features.

Since 2006, Synthesio has focused on developing advanced global web monitoring technologies and services, providing brands and agencies with valuable data and insights to better understand their markets and enhance their bottom line – and with a rapidly growing client roster which includes the likes of Microsoft, Nissan, Johnson & Johnson and RIM, it’s clear that they have established their place as a leader in the space. In late 2011, Synthesio announced their arrival into the Social CRM scene with the launch of their social engagement platform – Unity. An ambitious, cutting-edge platform, Unity aspires to take Social CRM technologies to the next level by offering agencies and brands advanced collaboration capabilities coupled with the ability to directly engage with their audience in real-time, not only within Facebook and Twitter, but now also within the other two previously neglected key media types: blogs and forums.

Lithium is the standard for hosted communities and social customer engagement with a seamless experience across websites, mobile devices and the social Web. The Lithium Social Customer Suite grows brand advocacy, drives sales, reduces costs and accelerates innovation for over 300 iconic brands, including AT&T, BT, Best Buy, Sephora, Skype and Telstra. Lithium’s software allows brands to build vibrant communities that engage and activate their social customers to increase sales conversion by up to 25%, double customer spend and lower support costs by millions of dollars.

According to Thomas Le Gac, Managing Director, Synthesio France, “After 4 years working on Social CRM initiatives for Telecoms, I can recognize a powerful social engagement offering when I see it. At Synthesio, we work on Social CRM projects with clients of various industries from Hospitality, to Finance to Telecom, providing proven, tangible ROI, and we’re excited to collaborate with Lithium to further expand our capabilities and provide our clients with the best of our two companies.”

The partnership will aim to seamlessly integrate the Lithium hosted communities as an additional media type with which clients may engage within Synthesio’s Unity Engagement platform. The result will be a uniquely powerful, centralized platform allowing for direct engagement within Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums, Facebook FAQ and now Lithium hosted communities as well, along with Synthesio’s powerful enterprise-level collaboration, reporting features, and the valuable ability to integrate with 3rd party CRM platforms, such as Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, and even internal client-side platforms such as call-center-logs, surveys, etc.

Lithium’s Bruno Teuber, Senior Vice President & General Manager, EMEA, said: “While new social networks offer a host of opportunities for marketers, they also introduce unprecedented complexity. Brands require a selective and unified engagement solution that helps them engage with their customers. Synthesio Unity provides a powerful asset to do just that.”

“Lithium is pleased to be a key community platform integrated with Synthesio Unity. This approach has been requested and validated by several of our joint customers. Synthesio’s monitoring background ensures a high level of expertise for accessing heterogeneous sources including high-performance platforms like the Lithium Community Platform.”

Social CRM has been an increasingly hot topic in recent months, as more and more leading brands realize the value associated with direct online consumer engagement, and seek out the latest tools to facilitate their activities.

According to Gartner, a leading technology research and advisory firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, “Two of the four most critical new issues for customer service organizations in 2012 will be:
- How to harmonize customer service processes that sometimes happen with a human support agent, sometimes through self-service and sometimes by peer-to-peer community networks.
- Building competencies in integrating collaborative or social CRM into ongoing customer service workflows.”

Both Lithium and Synthesio have been embracing this truth for customer service by enabling direct interaction for brands and adding an additional level of value by leveraging online communities where users organically convene to voice their feedback. In addition to building a venue for effective brand-to-consumer communication, these communities are designed to allow members to answer questions on behalf of the brand as well. By empowering passionate brand advocates with a dedicated venue and encouragement to answer questions, Social CRM is converting consumers into advocates, and advocates into valuable brand ambassadors.

“With one award-winning client, we achieved a level where customer service only answers less than 10% of online questions; they merely monitor the rest and certify the best consumer answers, so future consumers may easily find their answers. The results are substantial with enhanced customer satisfaction, improved brand reputation, dramatically reduced incoming support calls and savings in the millions.” says Le Gac.

Today we’re delighted to announce that we were among the select 9 companies to be invited to participate in the April 24th Forrester Wave™ report – The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q2 2012. In this evaluation, Synthesio was named a “Strong Performer” and it was noted for its international expertise and market presence.

This Forrester Wave is an industry report based on an intense 64-criteria evaluation of the top enterprise listening platform providers, in an attempt to accurately analyze top strengths and weaknesses, and assist brands with identifying the monitoring provider best suited for their individual needs.

Since 2006, we’ve been focused on developing advanced global web monitoring & engagement technologies and services, providing Fortune 500 brands and agencies with valuable data and insights to better understand their markets across borders and enhance their bottom line. With offices in Paris, London and New York and a rapidly growing client roster which includes the likes of Microsoft, Nissan, Johnson & Johnson, MTV, P&G, RIM and many more, it’s clear that we have established our place as a leader in the space.

According to Loic Moisand, our Co-Founder & CEO, “Our continued focus on a powerful combination of quality global listening & engagement technologies, coupled with industry-leading service, intelligence and reporting in over 30 languages has generated many great client-success-stories with valuable results, resulting in rapid growth for Synthesio worldwide. We are very proud to have been recognized as a strong performer in our field by such a respected organization, and will continue to lead the way with cutting-edge innovation in 2012.”

Some exciting news from the Synthesio newsroom – the forthcoming launch of the new version of Unity, our online engagement platform! Unity is a powerful tool for community managers, customer service teams and marketing managers alike, that allows streamlined engagement with consumers wherever they are online – be it social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube; or specific forums, blogs, and mainstream media sites. Look out for our demo video and official announcement coming soon.

To celebrate, we’re giving you the chance to win a bottle of champagne! In fact, we have 6 bottles of champagne to give away on both days of the Social Media World Forum in London on the 27th and 28th of March. You don’t have to attend to take part in the competition – it’s open to everyone – but if you are there you’ll be able to come along to Stand 41 to pick up your bottle of champagne in person!

To be in with a chance of winning, first make sure you’re following us on Twitter @Synthesio. We’ll host a Twitter chat in the late afternoon on each day looking at the themes of social CRM, social media monitoring and online consumer engagement for brands. You can respond to our questions by sharing something you’ve learned on the day, or an article/case study you’ve been inspired by (make sure you link to it), as a quotable insight, along with the hashtags #UnityChat and #SMWF. The people with the most interesting contributions to the Twitter chat will win a bottle of bubbly! We’ll also be awarding bottles to the speakers whose insights or quotes are shared the most throughout each day.

Besides getting involved in the Twitter chat, you can come and see our UK Managing Director Catriona Oldershaw speaking in two different sessions on Day 1 of the event. She’ll be speaking alongside Microsoft UK’s Vaqar Khamisani at 11:45 in the Marketing Tech Tool Box, and she’ll also be part of a panel at 3:50 in the Social Media Marketing theatre.

Even if you can’t make it to either of those, come and see us at Stand 41 in the main hall, where you’ll get to see a preview of Unity in action. We look forward to meeting you there!

With Synthesio’s next generation dashboards, monitoring your brand’s reputation on social media just got even easier. Along with a better user experience and more accessible design, you’ll see a whole host of benefits. Navigation is much faster; there are new customisable user profiles; and global filters allow even better access and analysis of data. Check out the video below for a preview and full walkthrough of the new dashboard, and see these benefits for yourself.

Looking for a way to maintain your brand’s online reputation but don’t know where to start? Synthesio’s Quick Start Guide to Social Media Monitoring offers businesses all the expertise it has acquired from working with leading brands of all industries around the world. This eBook looks at the importance and best practices of listening to social media, analyzing what your consumers are saying about your brand, and engaging with them effectively.

Synthesio secures its first round investment of 1.5M € with Entrepreneur Venture. The funds raised will be used to accelerate its growth in its headquarters of France and internationally.

After initial fundraising made with ESSEC Ventures in 2006 and secondly, with Lior in 2007, Synthesio has raised 1.5M€ with Entrepreneur Venture. This investment is part of a first round of capital investments. The deal, coordinated by PAX Corporate Finance, has received strong interest from financial investors.

Founded in 2006, Synthesio provides SaaS solutions for Social Media Monitoring and Social CRM. The solutions, available in 30 languages and designed for large companies, include:

• Monitoring online brand reputation (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, news sites, etc.)
• Human Analysis of verbatim comments published by users and identification of trends
• Engagement with consumers, influencers and prospects through social media

“In five years, Synthesio has established itself as a major player in Social Media Monitoring in Europe. In 2011, we continued to innovate by creating Unity, a platform for real-time engagement, online community management and customer service on the social web. Today, the arrival of Entrepreneur Venture constitutes an essential step in positioning our products internationally”, stated Loic Moisand, co-founder of Synthesio.

Since its creation, the company has experienced rapid growth, and currently has offices in France, the United Kingdom and the United States. Today, Synthesio has nearly forty employees and collaborates with brands such as Nissan, Microsoft, Accor Hotels and Orange Telecom. The company plans on continuing to increase its headcount to enhance its sales, marketing and R&D departments in 2011 and 2012.

“Entrepreneur Venture is the right choice of institutional partner for us; they are an ambitious investment fund with a solid understanding of the operational issues of fast-growing companies such as Synthesio. Their financial support and international expertise will allow us to rapidly position our business into strategic markets, “said Thibault Hanin, co-founder of Synthesio.

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About Entrepreneur Venture
Founded in 2000, Entrepreneur Venture is a financial institution, approved by the AMF, specialised in unlisted companies, and owned and operated by entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur Venture Capital has invested in 70 SMEs in 16 French regions. It manages two venture capital funds and 15 institutional local fund investments. It is now the leader of FIP ISF with over € 145 million raised to date.

About PAX Corporate Finance
Founded in 2003, PAX Corporate Finance is a specialist in fundraising and matchmaking enterprises. The firm combines, in an original approach, financial expertise with a vast knowledge of its clients’ businesses. Its areas of focus are computing, media, telecommunications, energy, medical technologies, healthcare, retail, luxury. The company has fifteen professionals based in Paris and a network of expanded international partners present on the main global economic zones.

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Press Contact – Entrepreneur Venture
Agence Cap&Cime
Annabelle Ledoux – tel. +33 (0) 1 55 35 07 72 – aledoux (at) capetcime (dot) fr

Press Contact – Synthesio
Sara Portell – tel. +33 (0) 1 44 77 89 10 – Sara (at) synthesio (dot) com

The Wall Street Journal is taking the temperature of Europe’s tech cities.

Loic Moisand, Synthesio CEO will be one of the entrepreneurs joining the Wall Street Journal event in Paris on the 15th September at Microsoft’s Paris offices.

Ben Rooney (@benjrooney on Twitter), technology editor at The Wall Street Journal Europe is embarking on a grand tour of 10 leading European tech cities to hear about new business ventures and to find the most innovative cities in Europe and their latest technologies. The event opens its doors to European entrepreneurs, start-up, angels and VCs to talk to The Wall Street Journal Europe and to all their readers. Click here for more information

We’ve only just announced our 5th anniversary celebrations, and what better way to celebrate than adding a great client like Nissan to our roster.

Nissan has chosen Synthesio to manage their global monitoring needs, and will be working together to receive ongoing web listening with human analysis in various languages for 28 countries across Europe, the Middle East, and India. Services to be provided include customized monitoring dashboards with detailed geographic breakdowns, top influential websites & individuals, periodic qualitative insight reports, and more.

Synthesio’s goal with this project is to utilize their unique customized monitoring and research services to provide Nissan with high-quality social intelligence about its consumers, markets, and competitors worldwide, to better understand the brand’s strengths and weaknesses, improve marketing communications, and help give them an edge on the competition.

On the decision to work with Synthesio, David Parkinson, Digital Engagement Manager, Nissan AMIE stated, “We went through a very extensive vendor selection process, and were impressed with Synthesio’s sentiment approach (human plus technology) and the breadth of their offering – both in terms of global coverage, and the fact that they could offer listening and analysis through an easy to use query tool. Their engagement platform also gives us more options as we mature. We’re committed to using social and digital intelligence to improve the experience we offer our customers through our brand. The quality of the insights Synthesio has provided us with so far is excellent, and their service ethic makes them easy to partner with and work alongside.”

The automotive industry is far from new territory for Synthesio, having worked with the likes of Toyota, Volvo, Peugeot, and Honda on various projects, and we’re certain that leveraging this expertise will truly be a great asset for Nissan.

The Synthesio team is thrilled to collaborate with Nissan, and are looking forward to providing valuable insight to help elevate their brand to the next level.

These days Synthesio has a lot to be excited about. We opened our doors 5 years ago as a small start-up online research company and have since matured into a leading global player in the Social Media Monitoring & Engagement field. Since our founding, we’ve been fortunate to work with some of the biggest names around – Microsoft, Nissan, and Johnson & Johnson to name a few. We’ve expanded globally, opening new offices in London and New York, and even doubled our revenue each year… and we don’t plan on slowing down any time soon!

So it seemed fitting that we kicked off our week-long celebrations with a move to our new offices. Loic Moisand, CEO and Co-Founder says -

“We’ve worked hard to provide innovative quality services for our clients, and it’s exciting to be able to reward our team by expanding into our new offices in Paris!”

So next time you happen to be in Paris, we welcome you to stop by and pay us a visit! You’ll find us at 8/10 rue Villédo.

This celebration also means 5 years of a steadily growing R&D team who, thanks to their passion and know-how, have developed cutting-edge technologies. After creating global reputation monitoring dashboards used by over 200 clients, we launched in May 2011 our revolutionary engagement platform: Unity. Our latest innovation, Unity is a Social Media Engagement platform which has been developed for customer service, marketing and community management teams to help bring their work to the next level.

But this is only the beginning of our adventure, so let’s meet soon online for more information, more infographics and more white papers!

For 5 years now, the Synthesio team has been working hard to provide a high level of quality for social media monitoring and analysis. Since we arrived on the scene, there has been a number of new tools for keeping an eye on who is talking about your brand every day. We maintained our position, though, as not just a tool, but a customized service designed to meet the specific needs of large, international brands and agencies. One of our favorite mantras has always been the 3 main steps for social media monitoring :

Listen, Analyze, and Engage

Now that we have custom solutions in place for business intelligence, crisis monitoring, influencer identification, campaign measurement, and online reputation monitoring, we have now developed the third essential part of Listen, Analyze, and Engage :

Unity : An Enterprise Engagement Platform

Watch the video below for a complete explanation.

Unity is the solution for an enterprise-wide social strategy. An entirely customized platform, Unity allows you to track conversations around your brand via Synthesio’s listening technology, engage, and coordinate multiple teams seamlessly. Unity offers:

• Social Management
• Real Time Routing
• Full Tracking Capabilities
• Collaboration and Permission Levels

Get in touch with us, and let us know how we can help you engage with your customers online.