An Anomalous and Awarding Year

What pejoratives can I apply to 2020 that haven’t already been used…and are suitable for the company blog and LinkedIn? The best ones have been exhausted; and aren’t we all just a little exhausted? But the challenges of 2020 make it more important to identify and appreciate what went right because of the extraordinary challenges of the year.

I marked my first anniversary on the Reltio product marketing and corporate communications teams last month. A lot changed from Nov 3, 2019 until the present. “Pivot” is an accurate, if somewhat overused, verb – and sometimes noun – uttered by many these last 10 months. Going a click down, to the Reltio team pivoting meant adapting, being more resourceful than ever, scrutinizing budgets and plans, and reprioritizing.

Two behaviors, above all, have made an indelible mark on me. First, the way the entire Reltio team came together for one another is unforgettable. Protecting the business was paramount. In our world, that meant coming together to do whatever it took to keep us together in the face of whatever the pandemic was going to bring. The next step, so immediate it was almost concurrent, was to protect our customers. A core Reltio Value is that customers are people, not companies. Paying this off meant refocusing.

As our CMO, Jakki Geiger, explained to AdAge, “When we looked around at what was happening, we realized that winning and losing wasn’t the right messaging. It just felt tone-deaf. We took a step back and asked, ‘How can we reposition ourselves, without getting too far away from our core, to think about what people are trying to do right now?’ They’re not trying to win. They are trying to protect their customers. They’re trying to retain their customers. They’re trying to serve their customers as their needs change. We came up with a new main message that was all about serving, protecting and retaining those customers. The way you were going to do that was, if you had more data about them, if you could really understand their needs.”

If there is any reticence about recounting Reltio’s successes in 2020, it takes a back seat to the pride I have in the strong year we had because we put customers and partners first. And that meant taking care of the company and the people who comprise Reltio.

We learned in mid-December that Reltio is a finalist in the international Cloud Computing Awards program which recognizes and honors industry leaders, innovators and organizational transformation in cloud computing. The awards are open to large, small, established and start-up organizations from across the entire globe, with an aim to find and celebrate the pioneers who will shape the future of the Cloud as we move into 2021 and beyond.

Other encomium – a word I learned from the PR legend, Edward Bernays, while in grad school at Emerson College – include:

• Deloitte Technology Fast 500, making the list of the 500 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and energy tech companies in North America for the third consecutive year.

• 2020 Corporate Content Awards North America

• Inc. 5000 list of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies for the fourth time.

• 13th annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Award for Marketing

• The inaugural Inc. 5000 Series: California, a ranking of the fastest-growing California-based private companies with the highest revenue growth rates.

These recognitions of business value, increased subscriber base, and revenue growth could not have happened without the confidence customers and partners placed in Reltio and our cloud-native master data management (MDM) software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. Reltio remains the only company that provides a cloud-native, multi-tenant, multi-domain MDM platform that delivers real-time data at scale. Our thanks to each and every one you.

And my personal thanks to the Reltio Leadership team and my colleagues across the company and across the globe for marketing, selling, building, and maintaining the Reltio Connected Data Platform, and making our customers successful.