A brand’s digital presence starts with its website. However, businesses nowadays also appear on services like Google, Siri, Cortana, Facebook, and others. Enter Yext, which is defining a new category called digital knowledge management. Yext helps businesses of all sizes manage all of the public facts that they want their consumers to know across the digital ecosystem, and ensures information such as addresses, hours of operation, and products offered are consistent and available on the intelligent services that consumers use to search. Yext’s vision is to be the central source of truth for businesses’ digital knowledge, thereby helping them to boost brand awareness, drive foot traffic, and increase sales.
A Leader in the Digital Knowledge Management Space
Yext’s integrations and technology distinguish it in the marketplace. Yext’s integrations mean businesses can make updates in near real-time and at scale, and provide the most relevant experience for searching consumers. As an example, Yext recently expanded its partnership with Google to enable restaurants to add their menus into search results, directly from their Yext dashboard.
Recent product enhancements also make Yext a leader in the digital knowledge management space. Recently, the company introduced the Intelligent Search Tracker, a feature that allows brands to understand how their locations are performing for both branded and unbranded searches. A brand can track up to 7 keywords across 4 query templates for each of its locations, and can view on a location by location basis, or easily aggregate results across locations or keywords.
A True Innovator and Serial Entrepreneur
Back in 2006, Howard Lerman, Founder and CEO of Yext, founded the company with a single goal: to build an impactful organization with super talented people. Along the way, Yext and its predecessors have made a significant mark on three industries — pay per call advertising, business listing synchronization, and digital knowledge management.
Howard, a true innovator and serial entrepreneur, founded his first company while studying at Duke University and eventually sold the company before he graduated. He then went on to start an online gym directory, and a pay-per-call service that he pivoted into an online listing solution provider, which ultimately transformed into Yext. Howard is also Co-founder of the private messaging platform Confide.
At Yext, Howard has consistently driven the company to push the boundaries of what technology can do and is always thinking ahead of the innovation curve. Thanks to his thought leadership and drive, Yext went public in April 2017. Howard may be young, but he has made a strong and lasting impact on the New York tech scene.
Helping Businesses Manage their Digital Knowledge
One of the most difficult challenges that Yext faces is educating consumers. The digital universe is evolving rapidly, and Yext has a solution that can help businesses manage their digital knowledge. As a pioneer in a new and growing field, Yext has the opportunity to help businesses understand the digital landscape and how to thrive in it as new technologies place new demands on businesses.
A Unique Business Solution
Yext provides businesses with unique solutions to effectively manage the wealth of information about their business across the digital universe. In fact, the development of the digital knowledge management industry has enabled the emergence of a new job: Digital Knowledge Manager, someone whose sole job is to manage a brand’s digital knowledge internally and externally.
Yext is also changing the culture of businesses internally by enabling them to become efficient and customer-centric. For example, the Yext App Directory brings efficiency to organizations by allowing them to harness the systems they use every day to better serve their customers. The Yext App Directory integrates digital knowledge seamlessly throughout an organization, creating opportunities for growth and time-saving efficiencies with apps for over 20 leading companies, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Smartling, Domo, and Zendesk.
Additionally, Yext’s partnerships with companies like Google, Apple, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, and Facebook make it unique. Thanks to these partnerships, Yext created advanced integrations, enabling the company to power digital knowledge directly to the publisher sites in near real-time. Product enhancements ensure that Yext remains an industry leader.
Future Game plan
The Yext Knowledge Engine helps businesses to be future proof. Digital knowledge that businesses store in Yext can power the next generation of AI-based technology from virtual assistants to self-driving cars, which rely on accurate information about people, products, and locations in order to function. Innovations like the ones described here are laying the groundwork for businesses to compete in the intelligent future.