Partnerships remain the watchword in the restaurant tech space, with Olo announcing a deal with marketing platform SOCi to integrate with the Olo API and centralize local data management and digital menu management for restaurants.
Through this strategic partnership, Olo data will pass through to the SOCi platform and its localized listings management offering to improve the experience for restaurant brands by providing a single place to update critical location data across hundreds of directories.
Customers of SOCi and Olo will now be able to update name, address, phone number, hours of operation, and other location information, including brand-determined menu links, through Olo’s pre-existing dashboard. This data will stream directly into the SOCi platform and out to hundreds of search directories and networks, including Google, Facebook, Apple Maps, Yelp and others, as well as the restaurant’s local pages and restaurant locator.
“Our partnership with Olo is another step in unifying an increasingly complex digital landscape in hospitality,” said SOCi CEO Afif Khoury. “As the guest journey and interaction model has continued to evolve, the restaurant technology stack has become more complex and fragmented. The resulting inefficiencies are most pronounced for multi-location restaurants, who are now trying to manage numerous systems across hundreds or thousands of locations. SOCi is helping brands restructure and simplify their workflows by integrating the most critical platforms and allowing important data, information, and customer experiences to be managed from a single source.”
The announcement added that local search results play a great role in how consumers find and select restaurants, highlighting the need for that information to be as up-to-date and relevant as possible. In addition, as restaurant industry competition increases, maintaining prime customer visibility is a constant challenge for multi-location brands.
In addition to listings management, this integration will provide brands with insights such as profile completeness, listing accuracy, and order transaction data which can be used to improve marketing strategy and location visibility.
“We are excited to work with SOCi to bring this exciting solution to the restaurant industry,” said Andrea Coe, VP and GM of Rails at Olo. “We’re committed to ensuring our customers are leading and benefitting from the digital shift, not chasing after trends. With the SOCi integrations streamlining the process for keeping location and other data up-to-date for their potential guests, restaurant brands can focus less on managing various listing platforms and more on their critical day-to-day operations.”
