Global B2B sales and marketing agency, BNZSA has launched its Decision Science practice and has hired industry expert Dr Angela Beresford to head it up.
Its mission is to provide BNZSA’s clients with actionable insights about their prospective customers and to anticipate when customers have a need for a certain product or service.
Previously, Beresford has worked for Google, Harte Hanks, Publicis Groupe, BT Enterprise, BskyB, and O2, where she created data assets and models to predict not just which companies to target, and when, but also how to adapt messaging to reflect individual contacts’ motivations and communication preferences.
The Decision Science practice forms part of a 50-strong Data Services team which includes data strategists, scientists, engineers, and analysts. This new department will use a mixture of proprietary tools and machine learning to analyse BNZSA’s ten years’ worth of first party data as well as data from multiple third-party sources.
According to Beresford: “Too many companies still suffer from an inability to make informed marketing decisions and take actions. This is often caused by siloed data, which is inconsistent and poorly organised, making it impossible to find opportunities, nurture relationships and communicate effectively.”
“The difference between data science and decision science is that where the data scientist concentrates on delivering insight and relationships from statistical analysis, the decision scientist starts by considering and quantifying the influences over the decision-making process, which can shape the optimal marketing actions to influence that decision. There is a huge opportunity for BNZSA to add value to their clients with Decision Science, and unlock a next level of growth,” Beresford said.
Speaking about the launch of the Decision Science department, founder and CEO of BNZSA, Brahim Samhoud, said: “We are extremely lucky to have someone of Angela’s calibre coming on board. The Decision Science team has a great opportunity to anticipate future end user purchasing decisions based on what we know: the product affinities, market trends, and behaviours we identify from our own data.”
“These concepts are well-established in B2C data science and we will take them further, incorporating intent signals as well as the advantage we have from the direct conversations we have with those companies we nurture,” Samhoud said.
