Big data companies seem headed into the same market cycle as the Dot-com era business and are attracting investment dollars from venture capitalists. In this case, ERN announced its formation in late 2012 with $2 million in seed money for its Looop product.
Banking IT leaders created ERN with the idea to become the connective tissue between merchants and banks and enabling smart offers to cardholders through its mobile analytics platform. ERN recently added an additional $1.6 million in seed money. The following quote is from an earlier article about the company launch:
ERN’s technology platform – which is fully PCI and ISO 27001 compliant – is capable of processing 100,000 transactions per second and is designed to help banks and merchants boost customer loyalty by enabling them to create value-added products based on the analysis of this transactional data.
Consumers are catered for through the development of a smartphone app that will enable them to track their spending in real-time and take advantage of merchant reward offers.
Looop is designed to triangulate consumer buying opportunities between previous purchases, time, and location. ERN isn’t revealing much about its progress, but says larger client trials are ongoing and it is working with “household name” banks and merchants.
If the big data market plays out like the Internet market did 20 years ago, most companies won’t survive, but those that do will be poised to bring home big gains for their original investors. It’s no wonder then that industry leaders interested in leveraging their previous gains against the next big segment are flocking to big data companies such as ERN before formal venture capital companies get there. These industry advisors are important resources for emerging tech companies that need advice and entry into C-suites, where pilot decisions are often made.
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