Harrington is a former executive vice-president, managing director EMEA for Vision Critical, and has spent the past four years running his own marketing consultancy Boldmarketing.

At Potentiate he will lead business growth and customer development across Europe.

Potentiate bought Vision Critical Australia earlier this year and in Europe it will offer Vision Critical software, together with its existing suite of tools and services, including insight community management, agile research, customer experience, employee engagement and prescriptive analytics.

Peter Harris, Potentiate’s CEO said: “Europe is an important market for us. Its size and early adoption of new research techniques provides us with a bigger playground in which we can experiment and work with innovative, like-minded customers.  Simon has a fantastic track record of building business, teams and delighting clients.”

Harrington added: “I’m delighted to be joining an agile and progressive business that will challenge the market status quo, by focusing on business solutions and outcomes, rather than insights and measurement alone.”