Bridgeline VP Discusses Recent Acquisition of OrchestraCMS
Bridgeline Digital is a company that has made considerable strides in digital engagement by helping its customers maximize the performance of their digital experience. Bridgeline’s Unbound platform integrates web content management, e-commerce, e-marketing, along with social media management and
web analytics to ensure marketers deliver the full digital experiences across all channels.
In the first few months of 2019, Bridgeline closed on a US$10 million financing deal, followed with two strategic acquisitions. With all of this hustle and bustle, we were interested in finding out more; specifically about the acquisition of OrchestraCMS assets. I reached out to Carl Prizzi, Executive Vice President of Product & Solutions of Bridgeline Digital, to brief us on these latest developments and to glean what’s on the future horizons for Bridgeline Digital.
With OrchestraCMS being Salesforce platform’s direct built, native content management system (CMS), this is a very significant acquisition in the market. What is the first year’s vision to make this a successful acquisition, and why should Salesforce Cloud customers be excited about this procurement?
"OrchestraCMS is built 100% native on Salesforce and is the only Enterprise class DXP available on the Salesforce platform. Bringing the functionality of the Bridgeline Unbound suite into OrchestraCMS will significantly increase the functionality offered to OrchestraCMS and Salesforce customers while providing an entirely new and fast-growing market for the Bridgeline Unbound product suite. Many of our traditional Bridgeline Unbound customers are also Salesforce customers, so we see great synergies here to offer additional value. By adding OrchestraCMS to our portfolio of products, those customers now have a robust offering for secure portals and employee intranet experiences. Our vision is to be able to tightly integrate OrchestraCMS with our Bridgeline Unbound Digital Experience Platform by extending our APIs to leverage the native Salesforce capabilities of OrchestraCMS and provide for highly targeted and personalized omnichannel experiences. With our combined customer base, we will be able to offer a broader set of digital experience solutions that help drive performance and ROI for our customers. The acquisition of OrchestraCMS is a great step in our goal to provide the most comprehensive, scalable end-to-end digital experience offering available."
As Bridgeline Unbound Suite has a back history of a .NET infrastructure, what does the first year with Salesforce Lightning integration look like between the two software verticals?
"OrchestraCMS is already certified Lightning Ready and has front end components in both VisualForce and Lightning, allowing it to exist in both environments simultaneously. The integration of Unbound and OrchestraCMS will, for the most part, be on the back end, with functionality being expressed through OrchestraCMS itself and its Lightning Components. With the combined resources and expertise, we are working on dovetailing our product roadmaps while continuing to evolve both platforms with a hyper-focus on interoperability allowing for a seamless exchange of data between the technologies."
Salesforce has many moving parts. Which of Salesforce’s “Clouds” will Bridgeline focus on first to ensure a seamless experience with the Unbound Suite?
"OrchestraCMS today is focused on the Salesforce Community/Commerce Cloud and the Lightning Experience. The OrchestraCMS capabilities will be extended with Unbound’s Analytics, E-Commerce, and search features. Although Salesforce has both CloudCraze and Demandware, those are largely targeted at large enterprises with a commensurate cost structure for subscription and implementation, while Unbound brings Commerce to Salesforce’s largest Corporate/Mid-Market audience."
It’s been a busy few months for Bridgeline with the US$10 million financing, product releases, and the recent acquisitions. What’s next for Bridgeline?
"It has indeed been a very busy and exciting few months for Bridgeline Digital — with our recent capital raise and successful acquisitions of a natural language search provider, Celebros, in addition to the OrchestraCMS acquisition —both are very strategic acquisitions that closed within nearly a month of each other! We will continue to transition our recent acquisitions intellectual property and highly-skilled resources into our Bridgeline Unbound product suite and team while we work to expand and evaluate other strategic M&A targets in the second half of FY2019. We greatly appreciate our customers and partners and look forward to providing incremental value to become the most comprehensive, end-to-end digital experience offering available."
Celebros, Inc. Acquisition
Bridgeline Digital also acquired assets from SeeVolution that included the natural language site search, Celebros Search, and analytics product, SeeVolutions Analytics Software. This acquisition will help their customers drive their online revenues by incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities with natural language search, ultimately helping Bridgeline’s and Celebros’ customers enhance value to their current digital experiences.
By utilizing AI, machine learning, and natural language processing algorithms, Celebros e-commerce search provides end-users with intelligent search capabilities by displaying the most relevant conversion-oriented search results. While delivering a seamless experience, the search includes a powerful recommendation engine, voice-enabled search capabilities, advanced auto-complete feature, intelligent navigation capabilities, search engine optimization (SEO) features, and multifaceted merchandising tools to help increase e-commerce conversions. The acquisition also includes feature-rich heat mapping analytics to help better understand end-user behavioral patterns.
“Bridgeline’s Unbound 7 product release combined with the Celebros assets greatly strengthen Bridgeline’s unique position in the eCommerce marketplace through the incorporation of strategic and innovative conversion-focused technologies that help customers drive incremental revenue,” says Prizzi, “Our latest product release boasts enhanced international eCommerce capabilities along with a redesigned administrative experience for efficiently managing complex enterprise eCommerce implementations with ease.”
Ending Notes
Ari Kahn, CEO of Bridgeline Digital commented, “We’re excited to add the Celebros software to the Bridgeline suit. We’re always seeking ways to improve upon our products for our customers— the addition of these innovative technologies will position them ahead of the curve in their respective industries.”
Kahn added that “OrchestraCMS—along with both the recent Celebros and SeeVolution asset acquisitions—will provide powerful pieces of technology to the Bridgeline Unbound product suite. We’re always seeking ways to provide even greater value and continued innovation to our customers to help them stand out from their competition in their respective markets. The OrchestraCMS platform’s native integration with Salesforce gives Bridgeline a unique capability in the web content management space that will bring new capabilities to our customers who use Salesforce.”
By bringing these recent acquisitions into their fold, Bridgeline is steadily and strategically expanding their product suite. This is an exciting time for Bridgeline as they further position themselves as a leader in marketing technology by offering industry-leading solutions and innovation to their customers.
Natalie Evans
Natalie Evans has over 16-years in the tech industry and currently works as the event coordinator and tech reporter for CMS-Connected, keeping up-to-date on what's happening in and around the Content Management industry.