We present a pair of symmetric formulations of the matter sector of the stationary effective action of heterotic string theory that arises after the toroidal compactification of d dimensions. The first formulation is written in terms of a pair of matrix potentials Z ₁ and Z ₂ which exhibits a clear symmetry between them and can be used to generate new families of solutions on the basis of either Z ₁ or Z ₂; the second one is an O(d + 1, d + n + 1)-invariant formulation which is written in terms of a matrix vector W endowed with an O(d + 1, d + n + 1)-invariant scalar product which linearizes the action of the O(d + 1, d + n + 1)symmetry group on the coset space O(d + 1, d + n + 1)/[O(d + 1) × O(d + n + 1)]; this fact opens as well a simple solution-generating technique which can be applied on the basis of known solutions.