SymphonyIRI returns to IRI

The company was originally known as Information Resources Inc. until it was bought by Symphony Technology Group in 2003. In June 2011, the sales data and analytics firm, which works in the consumer goods, retail and healthcare sectors, became majority-owned by private equity firm New Mountain Capital.

The rebranding was announced at its 2013 Summit conference by IRI president and CEO Andrew Appel who said: “Our rebranding signifies our promise to continue providing ingenious solutions and capabilities for our clients to enable growth in a highly fragmented, competitive and complex market.”

The summit also saw the company announce a partnership with enterprise data activation platform BlueKai.

The collaboration has resulted in a direct-to-consumer digital platform, which combines BlueKai’s data platform and IRI’s segmentation and predictive modelling solution to provide CPG manufacturers, agencies, media planners and buyers with purchase-based third-party data for targeting.

Also announced at the conference was IRI’s upgrade of the Costco Collaborative Retail Exchange, which provides a single, global program for category, POS and supply chain tracking at the wholesaler.

IRI senior vice-president for retail insights and solutions Cindi Harper said: “We developed these innovative new data offerings to directly address vendor requests, and we’re excited to continue improving the Costco CRX program to provide a valuable solution for any manufacturer that wants to improve performance at the world’s largest wholesale club.”