The 2015 CRM Market Rising Stars: Sprinklr Offers a Panacea for Social Relationship Management

Though founded just six years ago, Sprinklr has built a technology empire atop its social relationship management platform. In the past 18 months, the $1 billion start-up has acquired seven companies, including Pluck, Get Satisfaction, and, most recently, NewBrand, a text analytics software provider. The reason for the moves, says Sprinklr's vice president of marketing Jeremy Epstein, is the company's commitment to providing the most holistic, far-reaching social relationship management tool available.

"From the very beginning, we've had a very clear vision of what this technology is—a complete social technology for enterprises with all of the capabilities that a large company needs to effectively engage with their customers across all of their social touch points," Epstein says.

Thanks to the strategic acquisitions, Sprinklr has been able to expand its tools to fill any gaps in its platform. The decision to acquire Pluck, for example, was driven by a need for technology to inject social aspects into customers' Web sites; acquiring Get Satisfaction enabled Sprinklr to offer a community infrastructure for support.

The acquisitions have been frequent, but they haven't been frivolous, Epstein says. Sprinklr has already integrated the acquired technology with its own, and in March 2015, it launched its Content Lifecycle Management Suite to help brands manage every aspect of content development on one platform, at scale. A month later, it debuted the Sprinklr Experience Cloud, an integrated offering that enables brands to create, manage, and deliver experiences across 23 social channels and Web sites.

Sprinklr's efforts to offer the most comprehensive capabilities have not gone unnoticed. Forrester named the company a leader in its Social Relationship Platform (SRP) Wave report, praising it for its robust platform. "Sprinklr endeavors to offer clients every imaginable social tool, not just a full range of SRP features but also social command center displays, social ad buying functionality, and more," says Nate Elliot, Forrester analyst and the report's author. "Anything its standard SRP can't do, Sprinklr's team can custom-build using the product's impressive rules engine."

As for its competitors, such as Spredfast and Percolate, Epstein says Sprinklr isn't concerned. "We know there are companies that can do certain things really well, but Sprinklr is the only one that can do everything well," he says. "It's like saying, 'This company makes the best wheels.' Well, what people want to know is who makes the best car."