Business boost: linked data flowing throughout the organization

Michiel Scheepens
Aug. 9, 2018 - Reading Time 4 minutes

The potential of data for your business is immense. At the same time, it can also cause headaches: duplicate records, isolated data silos, customer records that differ between systems, you name it. To counteract these kinds of problems, you need to be able to allow data to flow through the organization. With a Data-as-a-Service solution, verified data about your business relations flows from an external database into your systems and between your systems themselves.

Business boost: linked data flowing throughout the organization

Is important data about your business contacts in more than one place? Do you have multiple ways to add data about new businesses or contacts? Don't know exactly who your top customers are or how you are performing in certain regions? Is your data not always reliable? Do reports from different departments contain inconsistencies?

Chances are you have a master data problem if you answered yes to several questions. The solution to this problem lies in master data. Think of that as a kind of common language for your entire company that is understood by different systems, applications and departments.

Mobility of data: prerequisite for success

With master data, your most crucial business information from different systems and processes is brought together into one structured information source. This allows systems to communicate with each other, creates structure in the chaos and builds a bridge between departments and their information sources.

"To have value," said data philosopher Scott Taylor, "master data must flow through your organization: between systems, processes and trading partners. The faster data moves, the better you can react, predict and anticipate. In fact, the success or failure of your business depends on the mobility of data."

Your data is clean, enriched and up-to-date 24/7

The key question: how do you make master data flow? Data-as-a-Service Put data about your business relationships in motion in an easy and effective way. First, you ensure that data about your customers, suppliers and prospects move flawlessly within your company. In addition, you stream verified data and insights from Dun & Bradstreet's (D&B) database real-time into your systems and applications.

How it works. Thanks to the D-U-N-S-number as the connecting link. These unique 9-digit identification numbers refer to one business entity.

This allows you to tie together business records in your various databases, resulting in consistency among the master records of your business relationships. And by linking your databases to Dun & Bradstreet's, the data on these relationships is automatically cleansed and enriched 24/7. Incomplete business profiles, for example, are completed and additional data elements such as demographic information, industry codes, contact details and concern structures are added.

Benefits of linked data

If the data about your business relationships flows freely between your systems and the D&B database, you can enjoy these benefits:

  1. Complete(er) company profiles.
  2. One reliable view of your business relationships across the enterprise.
  3. No data lingering in data silos of separate departments.
  4. Better collaboration between departments;
  5. Superior business intelligence and more accurate reporting.

And, as we explain in our white paper 'External business intelligence: grow and save through unknown data gems', it expresses itself in a lot of concrete applications. For example, in the areas of marketing, sales, compliance, accounts receivable management and supply chain management.

Connected data: this is how marketing and sales benefit

Marketing and sales departments reap the most benefits from accurate, complete and up-to-date data about customers and prospects. And thus from linking their own datasets to others.

Data on companies, contacts, products, markets: marketers and sales staff work non-stop with enormous mountains of data. It's easy to make a mistake. Think of company information that is not transferred from a notebook to the CRM. Existing customers who are treated as unknown prospects. Or two sales people who, without realizing it, are working with different branches of the same company because they entered the company name differently in the system.

By applying the connecting CRM to Dun & Bradstreet's database - and therefore also to other business systems - data about customers and prospects is automatically linked, cleansed and enriched. This way, you get more complete company profiles, you send relevant messages to decision makers at the right time and marketing collaborates more effectively with sales by sharing information.

A genuine business boost

Marketing and sales, it is often said, benefit most from mobility of data about business relationships. But in fact, every department can benefit. Do you ensure that the data on your customers, suppliers and prospects can flow between departments and silos? Then your entire business gets a real boost.

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