Published on the 13/06/2017 | Written by Newsdesk
Qrious adds Ubiquity, advances combined analytics/marketing automation value proposition…
One of Spark’s more interesting projects is looking to get even more fascinating as the telecom operator has lined up marketing automation provider Ubiquity for acquisition. That ties into a recent blog post by Qrious CEO David Leach in which he explained the company’s intention to become a ‘productised’ business.
Spark said in a statement that it ‘will blend the considerable marketing software strengths of Ubiquity with the powerful smarts of Spark’s big data and analytics software business Qrious’.
Ubiquity has team of 60 people and provides marketing technology strategies, data analytics, campaign management, development and integration services. It also offers services including ‘email address acquisition programmes’.
For its part, Qrious provides a data insights platform, with the advantage of being able to use anonymised location and other data from Spark’s mobile customers to add an extra layer of insights to other data sets.
Spark MD Simon Moutter said, “We’ve been increasingly confident about our emerging leadership in analytics and the potential of Qrious and we’re backing that confidence by investing in the next stage of its growth.”
He said the company believes the combination of Qrious’ analytical capabilities with Ubiquity marketing solutions will help an expansion into the data-driven marketing sector. “The move makes a lot of sense and is consistent with our strategy to invest selectively where we see opportunities.”
The combined entity will see Ubiquity’s agency campaign services and its proprietary Marketing Automation platform, ‘Engage’, be enriched over time by Qrious’ geo-data and analytics capabilities.
In a recent blog post, Qrious CEO David Leach said the company is seeking to become a product-led business. “Strong product representation on the leadership team means we have top down support when required. And each team understands product profitability is one of our KPIs,” he wrote.
“Next we’re transitioning to product-led thinking. That means we spend less time thinking and building based on the world we see today, and instead ponder the world many years from now. We use the market evidence and data available today to plot and predict the world of tomorrow.” One imagines Qrious has a good amount of that data available.
Leach added in Spark’s statement that the Ubiquity deal will bring together the complementary skills and interests of both companies and enable the move into data-powered marketing to gain scale and critical mass more rapidly than if Qrious was to develop the capability on its own.
“Ubiquity is a mature and well-respected player in the local marketing industry with a large, stable base of blue-chip customers. Bringing the two businesses together supports the ambitious growth aspirations of both companies and offers a great digital solution for the rapidly evolving marketing environment,” he said.
Leach added that Qrious is seeking to become the full-service data analytics partner of choice for all New Zealand businesses.
Ubiquity’s Nathalie Morris said the company’s clients have been asking for deeper analytical expertise. “This gives us the ability to serve our customers even better. Building Qrious’s advanced analytics and platform expertise into the Ubiquity platform is a natural next step.”
