Funds and Acquisitions for UK Big Data Firm ERN

London-based financial sector big data firm ERN, having added $1m in seed funding to its coffers on Friday, has acquired two UK analytics companies, Inspired Analytics and Elucidata, in undisclosed deals involving cash and stock.

ERN plans to use big data to offer banks and merchants the ability to create loyalty-based offers for cardholders. Its 'Looop' analytics platform uses big data from customer transaction histories to target ad offers and coupons to opted-in customers via smartphones. It can also use 'geofencing' to send offers dependent on the location of customers near to stores, for example.

Inspired Analytics advises clients on design and build of production analytics solutions. The firm's Director of Analytics Jim Jeffrey, a former Head of Data Innovation at Barclaycard Freedom and also previously a Business Partner in Customer Insight at Lloyds Banking Group, will now become ERN's Analytics Director.

Elucidata specialises in what it calls 'data strategy and high-complexity, regulated data implementations', and its MD James Baldwin will move to the role of MD of ERN's Analytical Consulting Division. Baldwin is a former Head of B2B Targeting at Barclaycard.

ERN said it was buying both the technology and the teams of the two companies acquired today. It already employs former Mastercard senior managers Anant Patel, recruited at the New Year as Head of UK Sales, and Brian Eagle-Brown who arrived in April as UK Merchant & Acquiring Sales Director.

On Friday, ERN announced it had secured $1m in funding to add to $3.6m from earlier rounds, and said it would use the money for further development of Looop and to expand its teams. CEO and co-founder Dan Brassington comments: 'Banks and merchants struggle to harness the potential of transactional big data because they simply don't have the infrastructure to store it or to use it to build accurate profiles of their customers... The further funding and acquisitions of Elucidata and Inspired Analytics have put us in a very strong position prior to the launch of our first commercial client. In Looop, not only do we have a big data analytics platform that is capable of processing thousands of transactions per second, but a system that can present actionable insights about individual customers in real time.'

Web sites: www.ernglobal.com www.elucidata.co.uk .