Press Releases

Emeryville – 2 February, 2010 – Lithium Technologies, the leading provider of Social CRM solutions to power the customer network, today announced more than 100 percent growth in annual recurring revenue for 2009, demonstrating the company’s leadership in the Social CRM and community platform marketplaces. Rapid customer expansion, thought leadership in Social CRM, and new product introductions all served as fuel for tremendous growth. Coupled with its recent Series C funding, these drivers propel Lithium’s momentum into 2010, as the Social CRM market opportunity expands.

According to a recent report by Forrester Research, Inc., “[A] recent survey of 286 companies shows that while only 21 percent have established, for example, customer community interaction sites, an astonishing additional 42 percent are piloting or are interested in implementing customer communities.” (“Topic Overview: Social CRM Goes Mainstream,” Forrester Research, Inc., January 2010)

“Lithium’s strong growth in enterprise social media this year is a validation of our unique solutions and our ability to drive top-and-bottom line benefits for our clients,” said Lyle Fong, founder and CEO of Lithium Technologies. “Our extensive experience in a market that most consider to be new territory continues to be a differentiating factor driving our growth.”

Customer Expansion

Lithium’s momentum stems from its unique enterprise social media capabilities designed to engage and energize its customers, thereby enabling online communities to thrive. Industry practitioners have recognized that the core of a successful community must be a powerful reputation and permissions engine to drive participation. Lithium’s unique Reputation Engine provides a significant competitive advantage.

For many years, brand and market leaders such as Sony PlayStation, Univision, and PayPal have utilized these innovative capabilities to ensure the growth and longevity of their communities. Building on Lithium’s ability to deliver success with the world’s leading enterprises, in 2009 Lithium added or expanded with customers such as Virgin Media, Sephora, Harvard Business Publishing, Jigsaw Software, Allscripts, Trend Micro, T-Mobile, Barnes & Noble, and National Instruments.

In 2010, Lithium’s focus will be on engaging with new customers in a variety of markets, including publishing, retail, technology, telecom, financial services, consumer products, gaming, and government. After opening new offices in London and Zurich in the fourth quarter, 2010 is also expected to bring new engagement across new geographies in EMEA as well as the rest of the world.

Social CRM Market Leadership

In 2009, Lithium recognized this need and, in turn, launched the industry’s first analytics offering to measure and determine the health of customer communities. The Community Health Index developed into the most utilized offering from Lithium, with customers gaining perspective on their consumers’ needs and being able to address them rapidly and effectively. Building on this momentum, Lithium introduced the industry’s first Social CRM Suite, demonstrating strong ROI with its customers.  As a result of its leadership in Social CRM, Lithium was named CRM Magazine’s Rising Star, recognizing the company’s creativity and the value the technology brings to its customers.  

Social CRM has become a buzzword for any company using communities or social media to interact with their customers. In 2010, Social CRM will evolve into a more structured way of communicating and engaging with consumers in real-time, all the while being able to measure and learn about their habits. This will enable companies to understand and direct their business initiatives based on reputable, quantitative data, resulting in happier customers and a more powerful ROI.

New Product Leadership

The company rolled out new products and innovations at a rapid pace in 2009. These new innovations included Lithium Mobile, a mobile-optimized community platform enabling ease-of-use for customers and users on their smartphone, and Lithium Insights, the first and only set of analytic solutions available to accurately measure and benchmark the health of online communities. It also included new introductions in its overall Social CRM Suite, including Social Web Connect, CRM Connect, and the Tribal Knowledge Base.

After extensive analysis of the Lithium suite, industry analyst Matthew Lees of The Patricia Seybold Group wrote, “The depth and breadth of Lithium’s components—forums, blogs, private messaging, Lithium Ideas, the Tribal Knowledge Base, and so on—as well as the interplay between them, are pretty much unparalleled in the industry.  It’s an extensive list of applications, features, connections, and integrations that support just about any community use case.”

For 2010, the company is leveraging its unique position as the only true SaaS provider in the space to deliver an even more rapid stream of product innovations to deliver success to its customers.

Poised for Growth

At the end of 2009, Lithium completed an $18 million round of Series C equity funding, adding two new venture capital partnerships – DAG Ventures and Tenaya Capital. The announcement comes on the heels of 2009 being another record fiscal quarter and year for Lithium in terms of new product bookings, new customers, and expansion with existing customers.

For more information and videos on Lithium’s Social CRM platform and solutions, please visit www.lithium.com/resources.

About Lithium Technologies

Lithium is the leading provider of Social CRM solutions to power the customer network. Working with market leaders such as Best Buy, Sony, AT&T, Research In Motion Limited (RIM), Univision, and PayPal, Lithium is delivering the next generation of customer relationships by unlocking the value of the social customer network. Lithium solutions combine the power of online customer communities with the broader social web and traditional CRM business processes to inspire customers to innovate, promote, and support on the company's behalf. As a result, businesses measurably improve their marketing and sales, accelerate innovation, and increase customer satisfaction. Lithium's platform is proven in high-volume, growth environments and provides the security, analytics, APIs, and multi-language support that enterprises demand. Founded in 2001, Lithium is privately held with headquarters in Emeryville, California. For more information, visit www.lithium.com.

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Lithium Media Contacts:

Michael Paige, Corporate Headquarters & Global, michael.paige@lithium.com , +1 (510) 318 7014
Sandra Teuber, Central & Southern Europe, sandra.teuber@lithium.com , +41 (79) 223 7356
Prelini Chiechi, UK & Northern Europe, prelini.chiechi@lithium.com, +44 (7826) 912788
Imogen Riley, APAC & Australia, imogen.riley@lithium.com, +61 413 274 210