The 3-in-1 retail tech platform builds upon its growing patent library, facilitating more efficient communication and improved workflow for its customers.
Surefront, the retail industry’s only platform unifying PLM, PIM and CRM solutions, today announced that the company has been awarded U.S. Patent No. 11,895,169 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The patent, titled “Distributed Messaging Communication System Integrated with a Cross-Entity Collaboration Platform,” adds to Surefront’s intellectual property portfolio, and builds upon the company’s pre-existing patents for communication systems accessible by users across one or multiple different entities.
Surefront’s latest invention directly addresses the longstanding software architecture rule, Conway’s Law, which generally states, “Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.” In other words, one organization’s communications systems tend to become incompatible with those produced by other organizations as each respective system is tailored and updated to reflect the needs of its primary, internal users.
Patent No. 11,895,169 preserves and reestablishes interoperable communication between multiple organizations, empowering manufacturers and retailers in particular to shepherd countless products through the product development lifecycle, all while keeping accurate information for a myriad of other products already pushed to market. Most critically of all, the platform infrastructure updates necessary to sustain these developments do not interfere with a company’s ability to share accurate product and communication information with other companies within its sales and development ecosystem.
“The sharing and enumerating of data models and information across multiple entities already underpin many of the services that we offer today,” said Doug Heckmann, Chief Solutions Officer of Surefront. “But the awarding of this latest patent is a bellwether demonstrating just how far ahead of the pack Surefront is as we continue to develop the technologies and tools to help manufacturers, merchandisers and retailers run better, more efficient businesses.”
Surefront’s fourth and latest patent enables the company’s customers, an array of the world’s most innovative retailers, to bring products to market faster and more efficiently, reducing manufacturing and development costs.
“Our mission each day at Surefront is to improve the lives of our customers by improving the tools, technologies and workflows that the entire retail industry is reliant upon,” said Luke Wang, Founder and CEO of Surefront. “We’re grateful to have our hard work and innovation formalized in this manner by the USPTO.”