Why Foviance acquired Applied Insights

Foviance is buzzing today with the public announcement of the acquisition of Applied Insights. Neil Mason joined on Monday and is already having a big impact on the team and the general feeling of excitement is palpable. Within Foviance, the acquisition was an obvious one, and I feel very proud that Neil feels Foviance is a good fit for him, and Applied Insights in terms of culture and reputation. I’d like to explain in a little more detail why I think this is good for Foviance’s customers and team.

Back in July, Foviance created a new analytic insight team that was formed from the ‘old’ WebAbacus consultancy team. We had taken the decision a while ago to separate the consultancy and services from the technology, as the vast majority of Foviance clients were using Omniture, WebTrends, Google, Core Metrics or any one of a number of other web analytic technologies, and increasingly we were being asked to help. Separating the consulting team from the technology allowed them to treat WebAbacus as just ‘one of the technologies’ they support and clarified our independence throughout the consultancy teams.

Due to WebAbacus’ capabilities as a data mining tool (as much as a web analytics tool), the consultancy team is very skilled in data analytics, data integration and marketing analytics. We have been able to build on these skills and the existing relationships with the likes of Omniture and Google to develop a decent consultancy offering. However, whilst we have scale with the team numbering five people before the acquisition, we lacked leadership and reputation in this area and for all the complex cross-channel customer experience and data analytics work we do, too many of our clients still see us as a usability company with a web-analytics technology on the side.

Neil will lead and develop our enlarged team and has a clear vision of how analytical consulting needs to evolve in order to deliver maximum value to blue chip businesses over the next 3 to 5 years. His reputation in the space is second to none and alongside my colleagues Catriona Campbell and Marty Carroll, further enhances Foviance’s ability to talk to senior figures about customer experience strategy.
So another stage in Foviance evolution and one I am really excited about. We are already benefiting from the news with new potential clients asking for assistance. Looks like we are going to be busy – no change there!