Business intelligence has always been key in keeping ahead of competition and abreast of market trends, but as the Information Age reaches maturation, the amount and diversity of data, now known as big data, available to companies for sifting through in order to make better more informed decisions has exponentially grown beyond established methods of old school analysis.
As a testament to this informational phenomena, the global Business Intelligence (BI) software and services sector has ballooned from $76 billion in 2012 to an approximate projected total of $143 billion in 2016.
The explosive potential of this still emerging sector continues to evolve and any company involved in the provision of BI must stay on the leading edge with a focused mandate in order to survive the coming consolidation. Management must be driven, but fluid so as to ride the changing waves to a sustained future of growth.
Engagement Labs (TSX: V.EL, Stock Forum) is one such corporate entity attempting to build a solid future through visionary corporate direction and to that end has made some key leadership appointments that are expected to expertly guide its growth while creating sustainable shareholder value.
I spoke on the phone with former comScore VP Sales and Engagement Labs newly-minted CEO, Bryan Segal to discuss the company, the recent additions and how those appointments would push the company forward.
For those that don’t know, comScore is one of the world’s leading big data analytics providers collecting well over 1.6 trillion online interactions each month from 172 countries, almost 40% of the total page views on the entire internet. I asked Bryan how he thought his experience with comScore would benefit him in his new position at Engagement Labs.
“comScore is a similar business but very different fields of measuring. One is looking at digital in terms of advertising and the publisher ranks and the other is very focused on social media and how it interacts with the advertising industry. So I will be taking my experience and what I’ve been taught about some of comScore’s fantastic business models and amazing methods of helping clients, and applying them to what we’re going to be doing here at Engagement Labs.”
Segal was quick to add, “One of the major reasons why I moved to Engagement Labs was because many years ago when I first started at comScore, there was the beginning of the digital movement resulting in wave of interest from advertisers. Digital, at that point, just had engagement, but didn’t have the monetization that it now does. Social is in the same place that digital was and I am excited to be involved in that tremendous evolution at a great company. The great technology provides an actionable score that enables marketers and CMOs to understand where their brands stand in social.”
There was another appointment at the end of October that was worth noting with the addition of Chris Greenfield to head up the company’s Strategic Partnerships & Client Acquisitions. Greenfield already had 20 years of experience in building business growth and driving innovation, and is the former President of Ipsos ASI, one of the largest advertising research providers in the world.
Bryan went on to extoll Greenfield’s virtues, “Chris has an amazing background and has worked with two major brands you may have heard of called Unilever and TNG and so he has an incredible amount of experience. He is going to be a great addition in helping us bring together the different tools that we have to deliver a fully data-centric approach to our clients. His focus will be helping in every way possible to integrate with eValue at the source on the agency side, the creative side, the sharecasting side and the application side in order to aid us in delivering a product that is unmatched by anyone.”
Another new addition will be the recently announced Founder’s Steering Committee, led by John Boyton, one of the ‘godfathers’ of Canada’s Chief Marketers. The function of the team, comprised of marketing industry leaders, will be to enhance the worth of eValue’s scoring matrix. Segal explained it this way, “After we walk them through the methodologies and the algorithms, how we do what we do, and what our market priorities are, they will provide input and/or validation for the things we’re working on to make sure we’re moving in the right direction. We will then use that input to make us the strongest measurement company possible.”
He went on, “You should know that research in our industry is always evolving and we intend to be on the leading edge of it. That’s why we’ve created this committee to ensure that our finger is on the pulse of exactly what’s going on. That way we can help CMOs, senior marketers, agencies and publishers realize their true social potential through not only optimizing, but maximizing their social media measurement.”
Segal was also very excited about the appointment of Rob Dickson Board Vice Chair, “Rob Dickson has an incredible history as one of the pioneers at MDC Partners, working alongside legend Miles Nadal to help build the company. He’s been involved in numerous Canadian and global M&A activities and his depth of knowledge regarding integration with companies such as MTHIRTY, who developed Sharecasting™ and Entrinsic Inc, a industry leading advertising company specializing in social media, has given him a impressive skill set that will allow him to provide a comprehensive solution to Engagement Labs needs going forward.”
Now that all of the leadership puzzle pieces are in place, what will be Engagement Labs corporate focus over the near term?
Since continuing innovation and progress is key to evalue growth and stability within the metrics and analytics space, Segal stressed that clients of the evalue platform can expect more features and varied options, including the platform becoming far more active on the API front, delivering eValue as a tool for inclusion in other tools and location specific measurements, allowing multinationals like McDonalds to understand how operations are performing in the social media sphere right down to the franchise outlet. He then added there were pending integrations with major partners yet to be announced.
So there you have it; a new CEO, a renewed vision and helming this leadership rejuvenation, Segal hopes to drive evalue analytics to become the globally social equivalent of TV ratings giant, Neilsen, and Internet ratings monolith, comScore.
FULL DISCLOSURE: Engagement Labs is a Stockhouse Publishing client.