Johannesburg-based digital customer communications management firm Striata South Africa has announced its rebrand to Tilte, part of the firm’s strategy to expand its offering to cover more than digital communication alone – and entrench its value proposition to Africa’s emerging markets, particularly in terms of engagement platforms.

In a statement released to the media this week, Tilte said the platforms on offer are sourced globally but implemented using local minds, experience and ‘feet on the ground’.

Tilte Managing Director Brent Haumann said “Our evolution as a company has been transformative and with our strategy solidified, we felt that a rebrand was warranted. By simplifying, individualising, and maximising engagement across the board, we’re making it easy for companies and their customers to engage meaningfully”

Haumann stressed that the existing Striata technology will remain a key pillar in Tilte’s offering. It will, however, be joined by technologies from several other leading players under the Tilte brand.

The company added that the new positioning will enable to expand offerings across Africa.

“Africa is vastly different to the 1st world markets of Europe and the US. Counterintuitively however, we tend to be leaders rather than laggards in the digital customer engagement space. Unlike in the so-called ‘first world’ economies, common services like the post office are either highly inefficient or have ceased to work at all. As a result we have needed to create innovative and unique solutions to engage customers digitally and build relationships,” said Haumann.

“This has helped to shape solutions that are ahead of their time and which typically set the trajectory for larger markets to follow. With these Africa specific nuances at play, our goal is to leverage world class global platforms but to mould them around Africa's specific and unique needs.”

Haumann said that as internet connectivity becomes more affordable and more ubiquitous, digital customer experiences will only become more important.

A rebrand is necessary to encapsulate the business’ product offering and its pillars of strength, including Striata and digital communications.

“Traditionally Striata has been associated with digital communications. For 22 years we provided digital communication solutions in both Africa and abroad. But as technology has accelerated, so have the expectations of our clients and their customers. As a result, Striata began expanding its offering to cover a more broad set of the solutions for customer engagement,” Haumann added.

“This expansion necessitated the need for a rebrand in order to better encapsulate our overall offering while still maintaining Striata and digital communications as one of our key pillars. Having made the branding change, our business is now better represented in all areas of customer engagement and ready to help create Africa's most engaged companies and customers.”

While Tilte acknowledges that the many growing tech communities in Africa will most likely have encountered much of the global technologies available (there are over 9000 recognised platforms in the Martech space, for example, he says), the challenge is to curate these technologies to ensure the best fit.

“This curation process starts with understanding the business, their needs and their customer engagement aspirations. Tilte is positioned to help drive this approach and ensure that we solve the problem, rather than "just sell the next software platform". Because we are agnostic of platform, it allows us to choose the best of breed platform in the market that extends and subsidises a client's existing ecosystem, rather than trying to "rip out the carpets" and replace an existing technology with another one. This approach is more prudent and helps our clients to achieve results far more quickly (and cost effectively).”

The Title brand will supersede the Striata brand over the next month.