January 23, 2013
By Judith Aquino,

NextPrinciples Debuts Social Analytics and Engagement Platform

NextPrinciples, a social analytics and engagement platform provider, today launched Insight-To-Action, a solution designed to help medium-to-large organizations create, manage, and monitor their relationships with prospective and current customers, as well as social media influencers across multiple channels.

Companies have long struggled to align their social analytics data with the customer information stored in their CRM systems. The answer, argues Satya Krishnaswamy, founder and CEO of NextPrinciples, is to connect the two types of data to provide the much-sought-after "360-degree view of the customer.

"In today's fragmented marketplace, many social tools help brands either listen to or engage with customers," Krishnaswamy maintains. "Insight-To-Action not only provides an integrated platform for those social interactions but—most importantly—integrates seamlessly with CRM systems. CRM integration is crucial to providing a consistent and superior customer experience across all channels."

Insight-To-Action's platform includes four modules, including Campaigns and Events, Contact Management, Community Engagement, and Social Performance, and integrates with Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Users can think of the new platform as part of a triangle that includes a marketing automation platform and a CRM system, adds NextPrinciples' head of operations, Subramanyan "RG" Ramalingam. "The initial modeling of a campaign would be done in the CRM system, followed by the 'push' that is done through the marketing automation system, and then we can pull back social data from the campaign and transfer the relevant parts back into the CRM system," Ramalingam explains.

The solution also matches social media profiles with a company's contacts on its CRM system to provide more contextual information, and to determine if that person is an "influencer" or a prospective customer as defined by the criteria that the company sets.

"The rich analytics enable organizations to move beyond vanity metrics of number of likes and followers and demonstrate quantifiable business benefits," asserts Krishnaswamy. According to the company, one customer gained an annual return worth five times its investment in the platform, while another customer was able to prevent a $15 million revenue loss by proactively managing an emerging crisis.

Founded in 2010, NextPrinciples is based in Milpitas, Calif. The company has partnerships with Microsoft, SAP, and SugarCRM and is currently in discussions with a number of marketing automation firms for potential partnerships as well.