Hewson Group

Hewson Group was established in 1989 as a market analyst company and is perhaps best known for being a key influence on the development of customer management application areas and in particular on the establishment of the CRM industry.  CRM is now worth $18bn per annum to the IT industry alone (Gartner).   Hewson subsequently became perhaps the primary influence on the UK governments e-govt strategy and this record of innovation continues with ground breaking work around the female consumer – acknowledged as the most powerful consumer on Earth but not always treated as such.

Hewson Group Background and Timeline 1989-2013

1989
  Market Analyst company founded by Nick and Wendy Hewson.  Nick Hewson was a law graduate with a number of years experience in the IT industry which included being sales director of a software house making early versions of relationship management applications. Wendy Hewson was a chartered accountant and Arthur Anderson management consultant before becoming vice president, Money Markets at Merrill Lynch.  Subsequent to the formation of Hewson Group, Wendy became a Fellow at Cranfield School of Management.

1991
 Hewson Group publishes its first research based report: The Impact of Computerised Sales and Marketing Systems; a seminal insight into the effects of IT in the marketing and sales area

1993
 Emerging Information Technologies – A Marketing Opportunity; (With Professors Malcolm McDonald and Hugh Wilson). Regarded as one of the most important reports of the 1990s and a precursor to the foundation of the CRM industry

1996 
The Business Use of The Internet; This forward looking report anticipated many later trends and was amongst the very first to establish the potential business impact of the Web.

1997
 Establishment of a Sales Productivity Benchmarking Group with PricewaterhouseCoopers and Siebel

Sistrum founded as Europe wide customer management best practice club. Sponsored by Experian and located in Cambridge, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

1999-2003
 Hewson CRM Blueprint methodology widely used for strategic planning and adopted by a number of FT500 companies.

2000
 Wendy Hewson establishes leading edge ROI practices in the customer management area. Report and Methodology sponsored by Microsoft

2001
CRM in the Public Sector; The standard work on how e-Govt should be developed and directly influences  UK government thinking on public sector efficiency.

2002 Hewson Consulting (the development company for the CRM Blueprint) is acquired by Kainos in Ireland.

2003
 Profit or Pain from your User Experience; Research into online customer activity, prefiguring customer experience trends

2004
 Towards A Citizen Centric Authority; The follow up work on e-Govt practice and widely distributed within European local government.

2003 -2008 Hewson Group is involved in M&A and investment advisory work

2006 
Email Retention and Retrieval; (with Symantec) Standard work on email policies

2008
 Customer Onboarding research initiated

Women Sex and Shopping (WSS) published for the first time. The Times immediately comments that ‘Marks and Spencer should buy this report’.  Subsequently WSS has featured in the Financial Times, Wall St Journal, Bloomberg, BBC, Channel 4, Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and many other media outlets.