Data is a valuable resource for your company. External business data about customers, suppliers and prospects can be truly invaluable. It can help you discover growth opportunities, avoid risks, and save time and money. But many companies don’t realize its potential. How can you use external business data to boost your company’s performance?
Data is a valuable resource for your company. External business data about customers, suppliers and prospects can be truly invaluable. It can help you discover growth opportunities, avoid risks, and save time and money. But many companies don’t realize its potential. How can you use external business data to boost your company’s performance?
Being a data-driven business isn’t simply a passing fad. It’s a recipe for success that will help you target your business objectives effectively, without wasting time on speculation, guesswork, and endless ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. Data gives you a clear understanding of your markets and a full picture of your customers, products, prospects and suppliers. So it’s no wonder that data-driven businesses perform much better.
The question is: how do you sift through today’s deluge of data to find something of value? What makes it even harder is that you may not even know what you’re looking for, simply because you don’t know what’s out there.
Data on 300 million companies
One resource that is readily available is external business data. The Dun & Bradstreet database gives you access to information on 300 million companies worldwide. This includes details of corporate structure, trading data, payment scores, credit rankings, any appearances on sanctions lists, and much, much more.
There’s a big chance that you may not even be aware of some of the types of data that could help your company achieve its objectives. In our white paper ‘External business data: an undiscovered treasure trove’, we set out 9 ways to use this data to boost your company’s performance. Here’s a sneak preview:
Explore new markets
How many companies are there in a particular region or sector? What do they do exactly? How big is their revenue? If you’re familiar with the market before you enter it, your go-to-market strategy is much likelier to succeed.
Get to know your customers better
By ensuring that everything revolves around the customer, you can provide the best possible service. Complementing your company profiles with external business data will help you to achieve this. It will allow you to perfect your services and personalize your relationships, thereby improving customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
Cut costs
By finding out all there is to know about your customers, suppliers and prospects, you can cut your costs substantially. For instance, why not enrich your internal supplier data with industry codes? So if you find out that you’ve got multiple suppliers for the same products or services anywhere in the world, you may be able to centralize your procurement to achieve benefits of scale. Or if you discover that you’re purchasing from multiple companies in a single group, you can try to negotiate a beneficial framework agreement. Another way to cut costs is to use real-time credit rankings on existing and potential new customers to avoid having to write off bad debts in the event of bankruptcy.
Find out who you’re doing business with
In the Dun & Bradstreet database, you can find details such as court judgments, black lists, sanctions lists, lists of politically exposed persons, negative press reports and information about ultimate beneficial owners. If you discover that a person or company has been convicted in the past or appears on a list, you can then take timely action. That way, you’ll ensure that your company remains compliant, while avoiding fines and reputational damage.
The database in action
Company growth of 5 to 10%, a similar percentage drop in bad debts and improved cooperation between sales and finance – these were the results achieved by the US arm of cosmetics company l’Oréal when it started using credit rankings and lead generation data from the Dun & Bradstreet database. Managing Director of l’Oréal USA S/D, Jon Kromenhoek said: “Dun & Bradstreet has provided the best leads we have acquired to date. The leads include revenues which help us prioritize and allocate to the right people. The detail behind the leads has been incredible and extremely accurate making the sales function and prospecting much easier.”
An endless source of external business data
Credit rankings, new leads, payment scores, ratings and media reports – the world’s largest source of external business data puts all this information and more at your fingertips.
- The Dun & Bradstreet database is fed by 30,000 sources to ensure that the data it contains on 300 million companies is constantly complete and up-to-date.
- Thanks to 5 million updates per day, you’re guaranteed the latest real-time information.
- All data is verified, through a combination of 2,000 automated checks as well as many manual checks.
- Every day, 1 million dollars is invested in managing the database.
These are certainly impressive figures. But they’re not intended to impress you. Their intention is to guarantee that all external data on your business relations is complete, accurate, and globally consistent 24/7. And that your company can discover growth opportunities, avoid risks and cut costs.
