Socialware Continues Enterprise Growth in 2013

AUSTIN, TX–(Marketwired – Jan 15, 2014) – Socialware, the leading social business solution provider for regulated industries, announced today that high demand from financial services professionals seeking a reliable social media solution fueled record growth in 2013. Socialware sales and services exceeded targets significantly, further solidifying the company’s leadership position in the social media middleware market for regulated businesses.

The financial services and banking industries saw many firms piloting social media with a small group of users during the last two years. Throughout 2013, many large financial services firms recognized that social media projects need to be rolled out and supported as an enterprise application, and depend heavily on a business partner that supports this type of implementation. This emerging market dynamic led several major financial institutions, including the fraternal life insurance company, Foresters, to adopt Socialware. Other clients, such as Edward Jones, The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America and Morgan Stanley, have standardized on the Socialware platform and are expanding their deployments.

“Socialware has enabled our advisors to use social to build relationships and ultimately, acquire new business,” said Lauren Boyman, executive director of digital strategy at Morgan Stanley. “With the help of Socialware’s compliance and content distribution capabilities, we had 36 percent of Morgan Stanley advisors who use social media frequently say they were able to bring in new business as a result of their use of these platforms. Those kind of results are what is going to move the needle of social media usage in the industry, as social replaces more traditional forms of advisor marketing and client engagement.” 

Other major milestones for Socialware in 2013 included:

Revenue and Usage

• Doubling new revenue over the prior year and increasing recurring revenues by 70 percent.
• Successfully onboarding thousands of new users, including 5500 financial professionals onboarded in a matter of weeks at a single customer.
• Archiving nearly six million social media events on Socialware’s platform in 2013.

Product Leadership

• Releasing first-to-market innovations like Marketing Campaigns, Account Delegation, and Multi-step Review.
• Acquiring three new patents for technology related to social media monitoring and access controls.

Team

• Growing across all departments, particularly in Support, Development and Services. 
• Expanding the executive team including Ken Naumann as CEO, bringing more than two decades experience growing successful enterprise software companies, and Mike Brunnick, a seasoned sales and services executive as vice president of sales.

“Based on our exciting growth trajectory, Socialware is expanding to support the needs of enterprise customers in 2014. But we’re very intent on keeping all the elements of innovation, responsiveness and customer intimacy that our customers value,” said Ken Naumann, Socialware’s CEO. “The company is poised for continued growth: we have a solid team in place, a platform that offers the most features and deployment flexibility, and more experience providing social media management solutions to regulated industries than anyone else in this business.”

“Consumer use of social media continues to explode and regulated industries like financial services are realizing they need to facilitate the use of social for their advisors,” said Peter Delano, senior director of CEB TowerGroup Wealth Management. “But, firms must comply with regulatory mandates on content oversight and archival, which is why it’s a requirement to have a solution in place that allows the firm to remain compliant while taking advantage of relationship building opportunities on social.”

About Socialware
Socialware provides industry-leading software and services for regulated industries to securely and compliantly market through social media, and to generate business through relationships with customers and prospects on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Socialware is a trusted technology partner to more than 165 of the leading firms in the US. Learn more about Socialware at www.socialware.com .