IRI (company)


IRI is a data analytics and market research company, headquartered in the U.S. which provides clients with consumer, shopper, and retail market intelligence and analysis focused on the consumer packaged goods, retail, and healthcare industries.

History

Information Resources, Incorporated was formed in Chicago in 1979 by market researcher John Malec and Gerald Eskin, a University of Iowa marketing professor. The two purchased scanners for supermarkets to gather point-of-sale data based on bar codes in grocery stores that could be sold to CPG companies to track what customers purchase. IRI became a public company in
1983. By 1993 Fortune Magazine named IRI a "company to watch" for expanding into two of its biggest markets: analyzing nationwide scanner data on consumer products and producing computer software. At that time slightly more than half IRI's revenues came from Infoscan, its marketing data service.
In late 2003, IRI was acquired by a joint-venture cooperation between enterprise software provider Symphony Technology Group and investment capital firm Tennenbaum Capital Partners.
In April 2013, SymphonyIRI Group, Inc. announced that it was rebranding as IRI. In March 2011, New York-based private equity firm New Mountain Capital bought SymphonyIRI. The company announced that it was changing its name back to Information Resources Inc., or IRI. In January 2019, New Mountain Capital and Vestar Capital Partners announced that Vestar will lead a new investment in IRI.

Management

In February 2004, IRI named former Electronic Data Systems Corp executive Scott Klein as its president and CEO, succeeding Joe Durrett. Klein served as CEO until October 2007, when he moved to IRI's parent company, Symphony Technology Group, and was succeeded by former Salesforce.com executive John Freeland.
In June 2012, SymphonyIRI Group, Inc. appointed former Aon COO and McKinsey & Company senior partner, Andrew Appel, as president and CEO to succeed John G. Freeland, who moved to an interim role as executive vice chairman.

Products and publications