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Information gap detrimental to opportunities and sound business relationships
The global economic downturn has meant that short-term confidence among entrepreneurs is at an historic low. Focus on short-term results, however, should not lead to long-term strategy being set aside. What are the sales and marketing solutions which will also prove successful once the crisis is over? D&B investigated the use of business information among 1,000 Belgian companies.
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Closing the information gap
Many companies are now switching to survival strategies - optimising cash flow, reducing costs, postponing investments and identifying business opportunities that provide a quick return.
Business opportunities arise constantly, even in a declining market. The question is which of these opportunities correspond best to a company's strategy and its competitive positioning.
The global economic downturn has led to a change in the appreciation of business risk and profitability
According to the authoritative 12th Annual Global CEO Survey carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The greatest challenge lies in correctly assessing business opportunities with a long-term return in a context that is subject to short-term imperatives.
Companies therefore require more and more business information and analysis in order to spread risks, assess investments and future scenarios, discover market opportunities, segment the existing market better and screen stakeholders and suppliers.
Business information remains largely unused. Yet it can serve to underpin performance management by means of the application of analytical intelligence.
Information makes it possible for a company to react to changes faster and to take advantage of the profit potential of the customer portfolio in order to improve results.
Belgian companies are not well enough informed
"Business information and rigorous analysis reinforce the company's core tasks. It is not only about monitoring economic activity, it is also applicable, in particular, to sales and marketing. The most competitive companies even share their analysis conclusions with customers and suppliers," says Bob Jennes, Market Development Manager S&MS, D&B Belgium.
In May 2009 D&B Belgium carried out a survey on the use of business information for sales and marketing purposes. This provided a particularly representative sample of responses from more than 1,000 Belgian companies which took part.
Limit your risks, select your customers and financially healthy prospects and go for it.
"There were some striking findings. When it comes to acquiring business information Belgian companies are way behind those in the Netherlands, Germany and Great Britain, which spend up to three times as much on this. Sixty percent of companies never buy or rent business information or a mailing list. Three-quarters of the business information purchased relates solely to Belgian business relations."
"More than half of the participants said they do not have a centralised CRM system to manage the data. Almost half do not have a list of potential customers. The company's most important wish with regard to business information concerns the quality of the data. They also expect reliable information about credit worthiness, company structures and contacts."
From business information to business intelligence
In April 2009 the consultancy magazine McKinsey Quarterly asked a large number of companies about their strategic planning in a time of crisis. More than 80% of the participants referred to an altered approach. Liquidity management played a greater role. Sales and marketing strategy is geared to fast profit potential and is supported by better market analysis using business information.
Business intuition should be accompanied by well-founded business decisions. Get the data and have the data drive decisions.
"Our research confirms two important trends. Almost 90% of Belgian companies wish to obtain business information that is selected on the basis of analysis - e.g. a customer or risk profile. Second, ICT applications are becoming increasingly important. This not only concerns the automatic linking of business information to ERP or CRM within the company but also availability on mobile or palm-held devices."
"D&B has been way ahead of these trends for some time. D&B looks to be the best supplier of business information and analysis with regard to both quality and market cover on every national market."
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Protime adopts smart marketing with D&B Market Insight
Customer Case Study
Protime is known for its high-quality systems covering time registration and personnel planning. Its solutions help speed up business processes and improve accuracy. The company advocates a systematic lead nurturing approach and has moved its own sales and marketing up a gear thanks to the D&B Market Insight web application.
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Fully manageable solutions
People and time are two crucial elements for all organisations because they are important and yet so limited. In a world where making work more flexible is becoming increasingly popular (part-time work, hourly contracts, telework, flexible working hours, etc.) Protime helps its customers by providing practical software solutions for time registration and personnel planning.
Protime provides solutions for small and medium sized businesses, companies quoted on the stock exchange and the public sector, including police forces and local councils.
"In the constantly changing Human Resources environment Protime has been able to react quickly to customers' needs. We do so not only by thinking along with them in a practical and result-orientated way, by developing specific workflow applications, for example, but also, even more importantly, by thinking innovatively. Protime was the first on the Benelux market to launch the web-based Application Service Providing, or ASP model, to make time registration, absence management, personnel planning and cost-centre registration available remotely," explains Eric Lemage, Business Coach, Protime.
Protime, set up in 1995, is among the Benelux market leaders and has 4,000 clients.
Correct prioritising
"We are the market leader in Benelux. The market is a mature one, which requires a renewed sales and marketing approach. In the Netherlands there is still considerable growth potential. We are just starting our activities in France. The time when we were able to do so by purchasing a mailing list and using the post is over."
Advance information, prospect qualification and prior analysis of sales opportunities are the new way.
"Protime is an advocate of the lead nurturing system. What this means is sustained visibility among customers and prospects by repeatedly forwarding information. The 10-man sales team for Belgium and the Netherlands must be constantly and systematically fed high-quality leads. Protime sought to optimise sales per customer and per account manager, including with the expansion in France," says Veerle Slootmans, Marketing Assistant, Protime.
"Approaching the market in a proactive way requires a change in mentality in the company, in terms of both sales teams and management. Once the choice has been made to professionalise identification of sales opportunities you end up at the best supplier - D&B," confirms Eric Lemage.
D&B Market Insight - Finding the ideal customer quickly
D&B's Market Insight web application provides marketing professionals with the insight of advanced statistical models. This innovative online application gives the user a broad and detailed overview of his or her marketing database. It can be used to create a profile of the best customers and quality processes, resulting in cleverer marketing decisions.
"We have secure access to D&B Market Insight via an internet browser, without any help from our IT department. The application is extremely fast, accurate and permanently maintained by D&B. We identify the most valuable and the most risky customers and prospects in a trice. We assess customers according to their value, development and permanence. And we help the sales team to open up new markets."
Customer profiling, linked to the analysis of marketing information with D&B Market Insight, generates high quality leads and supports targeted selling.
Eric Lemage concludes: "The use of D&B Market Insight generates better leads with a manageable flow for our sales team. By converting a good customer profile into result-oriented marketing action we improve not only our trading results but also customer acquisition and retention in the long term."
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Talent is not enough: Toughening up the psychological side
Company managers, executives, employees and athletes have a lot in common - ambition, stress-resistance and talent. "Talent is not enough to produce a top performance every day. Given the current economic climate, is your company thinking of winning or surviving?" Six recommendations by Keith Hatter, CEO of K2 Performance Systems.
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Working in a company is similar to sports discipline
"Talent is excellent - a prerequisite for success and a gift that should be nurtured. Converting this natural talent into increased, sustained performance is the task of every company and also the mission of K2. Sports science, research, coaching and personal feedback form the essence of K2's training programmes."
We work in a world full of objectives - sales figures, cash flow, profit, flexibility, perseverance. The ability to perform is a dynamic process that requires insight into and the development of personal qualities with a particular aim in mind. This definition implies that the ability to perform can be fine-tuned and improved.
Confidence is a self-fulfilling learning process
K2 has noticed that, in many companies, 'competencies' are set at a group-wide level, but they, and quality assurance schemes, are often designed for the lowest common denominator and serve to set minimum performance levels. In so doing they serve a purpose by clearly setting out minimum standards, but they are not particularly inspiring for the vast majority of people who might well aspire to, and be capable of, performing at far higher levels.
"The crisis has lead to a brutal market environment and unexpected challenges. Our conclusions are drawn from result-driven sport coaching and we formulate six recommendations designed to improve mental resilience and boost performance."
Negative thinking is almost always 100% effective. You have to want to go for gold.
o Prepare to be resilient. Face reality and believe in your ability to overcome setbacks.
o Market conditions have changed. But your core competences have not. Continue to rely on them.
o Learn to think about favourable (working) conditions. Success when conditions are good is easier than when they are unfavourable. Continue to think about the good ones.
o Control the controllable. Invest your time, energy and emotions in those things that you already have well under control. And less in factors you do not have a sufficient grip on.
o Focus on the results of input criteria. Output criteria, such as Key Performance Indicators (KPI) do not adequately reflect the current working environment and lead to unexpected results.
o Work on your (self-)confidence every day. That way you strengthen your mental resilience which then boosts your enthusiasm and perseverance. Remember what you excel at. If necessary, keep a diary. Ensure social contact during which you can talk about your skills.
"Both the individual and the team are responsible for their performance and its development."
* D&B Belgium is working shortly with K2 since 2007
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Best decisions based on best information
Decisions made blindly?
A company's success depends on the soundness of its management. Unintentionally, however, many managers do not take their cognitive blind spot into account when making decisions that are critical for the company.
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In a Harvard Business Review article the authors Max Bazerman and Dolly Chugh report that many managers do not seek or possess crucial information, do not interpret the information they do have in the most pertinent way and do not share it with other people involved.
From good to better
The American Sales & Marketing Institute has calculated that up to 72% of the content of all business information changes within the year.
Annick Schockaert, Project Manager Data Management, D&B Benelux, confirms these findings.
By the time they are barely a year old, 8% of the companies on all mailing lists in our country are bankrupt and 30% of the contact details have changed.
"Companies profit from systematically cleaning up and updating their customer and supplier lists. Adding extra information - such as business relations, concern structures, turnover estimates if balance sheets are not available, payment behaviour, etc. - makes this data more relevant for the sales and marketing teams."
"We also offer online links between the D&B database and ERP systems (SAP, Oracle) or CRM applications such as Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce."
"Finally, marketing analysis makes it possible to assess the immediate sales potential of customer and prospect portfolios. By checking your customer list against the D&B database, it may emerge that half of the companies on this list are younger than average, for example. As a result, your marketing can, if necessary, focus on new companies."
D&B provides the best business information in Belgium
The D&B database containing business information about Belgium is currently the most complete of its kind. You can consult the most recent information about more than 1,300,000 active Belgian business relations online and in real time.
"D&B provides total market cover - all the companies, the self-employed, those with no VAT number, non-profit organisations, semi-governmental bodies, hospitals, authorities, ministries and members of particular professions. D&B invests substantially in ensuring the database's accuracy and its expansion. Business information is updated every day."
D&B provides total market coverage in Belgium, including all non-profit organisations and members of particular professions. D&B is the only supplier on the Belgian market to completely update all telephone and fax numbers every quarter.
The Sales & Marketing Institute places D&B in the Top 3 of the best global suppliers of business information and analysis. The Institute quotes the fact that compiled data from D&B is reliable and ideal for effective targeted segmentation, even at the micro level, as being a decisive factor. The Institute considers this to be a crucial objective for B2B marketing.
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ACCESS HOOVERS - Linking your CRM system to the powerful Hoovers database
Does your company use Microsoft Dynamics or Salesforce? Then we've got some good news for you. From now on you can link your CRM system to the powerful Hoovers database. With Access Hoovers you have extensive information on more than 30 million companies and more than 36 million contacts worldwide at your disposal, where and when you need it.
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Taking advantage of D&B's global Hoovers database means that you can increase your sales team's productivity. Access Hoovers provides you with both width and depth: width-wise, more than 30 million companies and 36 million contacts worldwide, more than enough for very detailed prospecting; and depth-wise, sufficient insight and strategic intelligence per company in order to meet all of your sales team's requirements:
o Prospect for potential customers and create lists of carefully selected prospects according to your specific requirements and add these prospects smoothly to your CRM system
o Find new cross-sell and up-sell opportunities via the numerous extra contacts that Hoovers provides you with among your existing customers
o Optimise your account and lead information via the more than 50 specific data elements so that your CRM records are always complete and up to date
o Save time through extra functionalities in your Hoovers account, such as the Hoovers Family Tree Viewer (insight and company structures) and the simple Report Builder. Access Hoovers is already available for Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Oracle Siebel CRM. We are continually extending the database so that, in the near future, other CRM systems will also be able to take advantage of the benefits it offers.
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Credit information in GRS - D&B links DBAI to its Global Reference Solution
An all-in-one solution that benefits the whole company? D&B has now made it possible to query business information reports (DBAI) directly from GRS.
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GRS has previously proved to be the perfect combination of both insight into D&B's worldwide database with access to more than 140 million companies, and detailed insight into company structures with more than 10 million links. Today D&B is expanding this even further and enabling you to immediately call up a business information report on companies of interest to you. This way you can conveniently combine the advantages of GRS with those of DBAI.
Global Reference Solution (GRS)
In order to be successful it is important to have full insight into customers, prospects, competitors and business relations. With Global Reference Solution you can search and segment quickly and flexibly D&B's worldwide database of more than 148 million businesses, enabling you to obtain information about and insight into individual companies, concerns and market segments. Global Reference Solution contains reliable information about businesses, ranging from small one-man enterprises to large multinationals with thousands of sites.
D&B Access for the Internet (DBAI)
Every day D&B business information reports help you to make credit decisions, analyse a company's financial strength and uncover commercial opportunities. D&B business information reports contain unique predictive indicators such as the D&B Rating, the D&B Bankruptcy Score and the D&B Payment Score. These risk indicators were specially developed to enable you to make the right decisions simply. D&B uses the D&B Credit Limit to make a recommendation regarding the maximum credit to be granted on a monthly basis per supplier. That way you can take well-founded decisions immediately.
Do you already use GRS? Ask for the link with DBAI to be activated in your system (free of charge) today and make immediate use of this extra functionality.
You aren't a GRS customer yet? Phone us today and ask for a free trial!
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D&B eLearning - Online video training for better insight
D&B has recently made a number of e-learning videos available. The GRS training video is the first available and enables you to learn to use this application in a simple and efficient way in order to be able to take full advantage. Take a look and pick up some pointers. Even if you are not yet a GRS customer, the video will help you discover all the things that D&B's Global Reference Solution can do!
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D&B Germany triples business data with telephone numbers
Germany continues to be Belgium's third largest export market. D&B responded to customer feedback relating to business information on German companies and D&B Germany increased the number of telephone numbers available from 0.8 million to 3 million companies.
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Germany is a large market: 82.3 million inhabitants, a Gross Domestic Product of 2,424 billion euro, 1.123 billion euro of exports, 962 billion euro of imports, 849,000 businesses started and 165,000 bankruptcies annually.
With subsidiary Bisnode D&B provides optimal business information cover. Customer feedback said that the quality could be better. So D&B has since extended the database for Germany to 5.5 million companies, 3 million of which have telephone numbers, which is absolutely unique on the market. Satisfaction research now puts D&B in first place with regard to the quality of its data and its customer-oriented service.
- For more information, contact your Sales Consultant at D&B or call 02/481.82.00.
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Another 150 Belgian companies bankrupt - Did you check www.faillietofniet.be?
D&B continues to emphasise how important it is for your company that the possible bankruptcy of a customer or supplier is anticipated in time. Do not wait until it is too late: monitor your business relations in a proactive way.
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