Sprinklr adds services to its social solutions with Dachis Group acquisition

In around the hype surrounding Facebook’s flabbergasting $19bn purchase of Whatsapp, the world of social saw another major acquisition, at a fraction of the price (that’s an assumption, no actual figure has been announced), that arguably showed more guts.  

Sprinklr, a New York-based provider of Cloud software that allows clients to manage cross-division, cross-platform social media marketing delivery, announced mid-week that it would be buying Dachis Group, a Texas-based social business services provider.

The companies will combine to push a social point and service integration into some of the world’s largest organisations, something Dachis Group has been doing for over five years with its consultancy service, but has struggled to gain accelerated market share with over the last 12 months.

It’s an intriguing move. The acquisition/merger will give Sprinlkr more reach in terms of the customers it can approach with its real-time marketing tools, but it goes against the grain of the general trend within its marketplace:

“Dachis comes with 75 people, so as a result of this move more than a quarter of Sprinklr’s staffing will now be made up on the services side,” says Jenny Sussin, principal research analyst - social for CRM at Gartner.

“You don’t often see vendors in this space doing that, they’re usually growing to be acquired by big CRM providers like Oracle or SAP, or someone in the digital marketing space, like Adobe.  

“This acquisition shows Sprinklr’s determination to stay independent in this space. This market really isn’t going to be a point solution market for very long so it’s a sensible move if you’re not aiming for acquisition.

“One of the things to note is that marketers like to have services bundled with their contracts, rather than buying software on its own, so this definitely ups the value of Sprinklr’s contracts because they’ll get to sell services as well as what they sell already.”

Both Sprinklr and Dachis have previously had acquisition requests made by other technology companies but Sprinklr’s decision to go it alone underlines the faith its bosses have in it surviving the temptations of being swallowed up by the superpowers around them which own the CRM suite space.  

 “After many years of traveling independently, Sprinklr and Dachis group found each other,” said Ragy Thomas, CEO, Sprinklr, in a blog post about the buyout on Wednesday. “Together, we continue our journey to provide large businesses with the infrastructure to survive and thrive in the social age.   

“It’s the age of the connected consumer. Armed with more information than brands, they decide when and where to engage with the brand. They amplify good experiences and massively amplify bad ones.

“Businesses must adapt to this new reality of a world shrunk by social media. And go back to its roots. Building better products and caring much more about their customers. Building relationships by managing experiences at every touch point. Across internal teams, departments, divisions, and locations.

“Dachis Group accelerates Sprinklr’s roadmap by at least 12 months. By bringing brand analytics, content optimisation and employee advocacy to Sprinklr’s industry leading Social Relationship Platform.”

Thomas’s statement that the combined package would become available “within 90 days” shows the speed at which the company is moving to push a broader consultancy option into its current product. But Sussin still believes the jury is out as to whether the move will prove to benefit Sprinklr or simple shift their thinking within a changing market:

“The market is likely to consolidate over the next year or so, so we’ll see more integrations as marketers aim to start merging and matching customer profiles wherever they can. The social silo is becoming part of the entire customer suite.

“There are a number of new markets to explore still – Central Europe,  Africa and APAC all offer good emerging markets for these products, so that’s certainly a route Sprinklr will entertain.

“But it’s difficult to say whether there’s still time for point social solutions to thrive, because as more companies begin to mature, they’re going to be looking for more holistic applications for marketing or customer services or sales vs choosing several different point solutions.”

Whatever happens, it’s clearly a bold strategy on Sprinklr’s behalf. Time will tell as to whether they’ll realise their Social Relationship Platform dream, or give into the inevitability of acquisition by one of the bigger players, like many of their close competitors have done over the last year or so.