To underline its determination to succeed in the intensely competitive consumer data market, LBM announced the appointment of Dak Liyanearachchi, the former global business development director at Dunnhumby, as the board director who will oversee the move into B2C.
"We're not playing games here," said LBM marketing director Andrew Colwell.
"We've got very big intentions. We're very ambitious, which is exactly why we've brought someone in at board director level for this new division.
It's a very important strategic move for LBM."
In heading the new consumer data and consulting division, Liyanearachchi said he had an opportunity to exploit the company's existing strengths in the B2B market - insight, analysis, predictive modelling and other value-added data services.
"What excited me about LBM was the fact there are some very deep client relationships and very deep capabilities that we can build on," he said.
"I have a really good place to start in terms of talking to some of those clients and enhancing what we've already got."
Liyanearachchi said LBM hoped to take consumer data analytics and insight to a new level. The company intends to work closely with clients to develop strategies and then help them to execute them properly - something Liyanearachchi sees as a gap in the market.
The idea is to help clients make changes within their operations that will enable them to better drive response and build ongoing relationships with consumers. LBM will also help clients consolidate their data and enhance their whole understanding of customers and how to deal with them.
"Because we have so much contact with customers and consumers on a regular basis through our contact centre, we'll be looking to use that as a means of enriching data," Liyanearachchi noted.
He added that LBM had received some interest from companies in the retail and financial services sectors.
The move into consumer data follows earlier announcements that LBM had formed partnerships with Equifax and DLG.
The Equifax partnership came into effect just as Dave Webber, head of marketing products at the consumer data specialist, moved to Transactis to take up the newly created role of product and marketing director.
DLG has announced it is expanding its team with the appointment of Daniel Hain as strategic partnership director. Hain was previously a director at Abacus Direct.
Dave Watson has been appointed DLG's head of sales. Before the move, he was sales director at Wegener DM UK.
These latest appointments follow Mark Arnold's move to DLG as business planning director, as revealed in last month's Direct Response.
_1.jpg)
.jpg)
