Pendo Announces Product Cloud Alliance

RALEIGH, N.C., June 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Pendo, creator of the leading product cloud for digital products and data-driven product teams, today announced the Product Cloud Alliance, the first coalition of technology vendors serving digital product teams. Founding members include InVision, UserVoice, FullStory, Split, ProductPlan and Pendo, each of which provide complementary tools that make product managers more effective and efficient in their jobs.

The story of the product cloud is told by each of the participating alliance partners at productcloud.io, an interactive microsite detailing the digital product lifecycle as a whimsical visual journey. The product cloud architecture is further described in a downloadable 47-page educational eBook, with each chapter written by a product leader from each alliance partner.

The Product Cloud Alliance includes:

• Roadmapping (ProductPlan): Communicating and aligning cross functional stakeholders around a prioritized product plan and setting delivery dates is an ongoing challenge for product managers. Roadmapping software helps teams bring together business strategy and product goals alongside an actionable product backlog.
• Design & Prototyping (InVision): Exceptional product design is now the basic expectation of end users. By creating clickable mockups of designs, product managers are able to render and solicit fast feedback on new products, features and experiences.
• Feature Flagging & Experimentation (Split): Iterative learning continues once changes to a product are ready to ship. These tools allow product teams to selectively roll out features and measure outcomes across different user segments.
• User Onboarding & Education (Pendo): Once a new product or feature is live, product teams must ensure users discover and learn how to use it. Creating digital guides and messages using these tools helps to educate users and accelerate adoption of new products and features.
• Usage Analytics (Pendo): At each stage of the lifecycle, product usage insights are critical. These tools let product teams measure user behaviors like logins, feature use, and the paths users take through the product, and benchmark them over time.
• Session Replay (FullStory): With usage data in hand, product teams often want  additional context to make decisions about product improvements. Session replay tools drill into individual sessions to reveal insights into the customer journey, and identify specific usability issues.
• User Feedback & Sentiment (UserVoice): Qualitative feedback is also necessary for understanding user behavior and sentiment. These tools help product managers capture relevant feedback from users and measure and understand their satisfaction with a product.

"Modern technology companies realize that excellent product managers are essential to the success of their products," said Greg Coticchia, executive director of the Master of Science in Product Management program at Carnegie Mellon University. "The variety of tools available today ? and, crucially, how they're deployed and how they're used in combination ? help these product leaders move from being tactical to strategic innovators within their organizations."

This alliance advances Pendo's initial March 2018 launch of the product cloud, which builds on Pendo's product data foundation with a new integration hub that adds extensibility for sharing data across a connected toolchain. The integration hub will facilitate connections between Product Cloud Alliance vendors starting with a new integration between Pendo and InVision that will be available later this year. This integration will allow software product teams to easily test and collect feedback on feature prototypes from users directly in their products. Split will also deliver a Pendo integration later this year, allowing product teams to release features to specific users and measure how users engage with and feel about these features.

"Product management is experiencing a renaissance today as companies look to product innovation and user experience as the basis for competitive advantage," said Todd Olson, co-founder and CEO of Pendo. "Contributing to the ascendance of product is a growing ecosystem of SaaS tools purpose-built for product people. We see the Product Cloud Alliance as both the beginning of an organized ecosystem for this emerging category, and a reference architecture for the modern product organization."

Founding members of the Product Cloud Alliance will work together to equip product leaders with best-practice insights on how to automate, instrument and streamline product management functions for better business outcomes. This will include public webinars; multi-city panel discussions with high-profile chief product officers; VIP, invitation-only salon-style dinners; and thought leadership published on productcraft.com and elsewhere. Over time, the alliance will expand beyond the founding partners to include a broader ecosystem of vendors with a shared interest in elevating the profile and performance of product management disciplines. 

About Pendo
Pendo is a product cloud that provides user insight, user guidance and user communication for digital product teams. With Pendo, these product teams can understand product usage, collect feedback, measure NPS, onboard users, and announce new features in app?all without requiring engineering resources. Founded in 2013 in the heart of Raleigh and backed by Battery Ventures, Spark Capital and Meritech Capital, Pendo has raised $56 million and counts nearly 600 customers, including Zendesk, LexisNexis, Coupa, Gainsight, BMC, and Sprinklr. In 2017, Pendo was named a Top 50 Startup by LinkedIn. In 2018, the company was named a Best Workplace by Inc. Magazine. Pendo tracks 1.5 billion user actions a day, and improves the product experience for 80 million users every month. Pendo is also the producer of ProductCraft, a destination editorial site with insights by and for product leaders; and Pendomonium, a premier product conference. For more information, visit: www.pendo.io

SOURCE Pendo