In my last post, I mentioned Corporate Registrations and Fictitious Business Name filings as sources Experian leverages for discovering linkage relationships.  Today, I’d like to expand a bit on the different types of names that may be associated to a business.  That’s right, there’s more to the topic than meets the eye.

Let’s start with the Legal Name of the business.  The legal name represents the business’s true ownership.  It refers to the legal entity or person that owns a business and there are several variations as discussed below.

For corporations, the legal name of a business is the one registered with the Secretary of State in the state of incorporation. (The state of incorporation may differ from the state in which the business is physically located or operating.)  Other business structures, such as Limited Liability Companies (LLC), are also registered at the state level. 

For a partnership, the name in the partnership agreement or the last names of the partners will be the legal name of the business.  Some forms of partnerships are filed with the Secretaries of State. 

For an individual owner, the owner’s full name is the legal name of the business.  Sole proprietors are not usually required to register their name with the state government. 

Fictitious business names are required when the business owner wants to publicly use a name for their business that differs from the legal name.  It allows the owner to accept checks or credit cards, and to open bank accounts with the fictitious name.  Fictitious business names are also referred to as doing business as (DBA) names, trade names, or assumed names.  The DBA name is most often used on the business’s storefront and in their advertising. 

Requirements for registering fictitious business names vary by state. These rules may differ depending on whether an individual or a legal entity is the owner of the business.  Finally, the place of registration may be at either the state or county level within the state where the business is located. 

We capture legal names and fictitious business names from a variety of public record sources.  Our source-intake process allows us to permanently store the data as it comes from each source.  We then execute pre-defined rules against these sources to get the best Legal Name / DBA combination which we promote to the composite record that our customers see.  

It’s that simple!

In my previous post, I talked about how the technology environment enables our Corporate Linkage solution, and promised to describe how the “linkage recipe” works – so here we go.

Let’s start with what is eligible for linkage and why.  Since our customers are looking for data that helps them assess risk and accountability for the obligations of the business, Experian links entities that have legal and financial responsibility as is the industry accepted norm.

We have set up relationships with select sources that provide subsidiary/parent and headquarter/branch relationships on the publicly-held and the largest privately-held companies in the U.S., including multi-national companies with offshore locations.  These sources give us superior coverage on the most visible and dynamic businesses.

Also, our vast data warehouse and corresponding rules engine allows us to perform automated data mining against a wide array of public record data (like Corporate Registrations and Fictitious Business Name filings) and other credit data.  These processes highlight linkage relationships, generally on small and mid-sized businesses that would otherwise be too obscure to identify manually.   We take this data mining one step further by using strict business rules to identify candidates that expand the linkage on the largest corporate families.

The final component of our linkage process is a dedicated linkage maintenance team, based in Costa Mesa, CA, equipped with powerful maintenance tools designed specifically for corporate linkage.  This team monitors and updates the top corporate families, monitors Merger and Acquisition (M&A) activity and makes real-time linkage updates as changes occur.  These processes ensure we have the freshest most accurate view of a corporate family. 

This team utilizes an assortment of news feeds within our Corporate Linkage M&A Monitoring and Update Program.  Within this program, hundreds of triggers are received each day from best-in-class news aggregators and other sources.  Each feed is reviewed for relevance by the Experian team.  Once the research of an event is complete, the team updates our database using powerful data maintenance tools to reflect the new organizational structure.  The updated corporate linkage structure is available to our clients in real time via our suite of online products.  This ability to provide real-time updates to corporate linkage is unparalleled in the industry.  The team takes pride in the fact that over the last 90 days, 100 percent of M&A updates were completed the same day the trigger was received.

In prior posts I have discussed Experian’s data model and how the data model allows us to keep our commercial file up-to-date and accurate.  Today, I’ll explain how we leverage our data assets and technology infrastructure to make Corporate Hierarchy Linkage available to customers. 

I’m sure no one will be surprised to hear me say that the “richness” of the data model is the backbone of our Corporate Linkage solution.  Our data model takes advantage of the strengths and uniqueness of thousands of data sources and gives us a lot to work with as we bring Corporate Linkage to market.  But first, let me describe the “back office” process that makes all of this happen. 

Experian undertook a re-platforming initiative several years ago that made our robust data and linkage processes possible. This was a significant investment that resulted in a very nimble relational database environment we call BizSource.  The development and migration to BizSource generated the capability to store and leverage data in ways that create strong benefits to our customers, and is the envy of other industry players.

So what does all this talk about the data environment have to do with Corporate Linkage?  Well, the quick answer is that it allows us to combine best-in-class sourced data, robust data rules and targeted manual revisions, creating a multi-dimensional linkage model.

Next time, I’ll drill down on each of these elements and explain how the “linkage recipe” works.

In my last blog post I talked about how Experian’s commercial data model works.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you should give it a look at: http://www.experian.com/blogs/business-credit/2011/05/03/the-inner-workings-of-our-commercial-data/

Today, I want to explore the importance of data freshness.  Unless you are “in the business”, maintaining a commercial database might look relatively easy and straightforward.  However, those of us in the data business know that it is relatively easy to collect data, but the real work is how to keep it fresh and accurate.

We maintain a file of about 25 million active business credit files. So how does Experian manage this much data and keep it fresh and ready for our customers to decision from?

The answer is that we really push our technology hard.  Experian has invested heavily in our data environment over the last several years, resulting in a very powerful data processing engine.  Now, we are able take data in from thousands of sources and run rules against each source to make the best data elements bubble to the top. 

Let me say this again another way.  We are processing MANY sources every day, each of those sources will have every data element scrutinized relative to pre-defined, source-specific rules.  By leveraging the strengths of thousands of data sources day in and day out, our data environment has a lot to work with.

But this is only part of the data freshness plan.  We have built in many “triggers” that will set in motion automated and/or manual processes.  For example, the research team at Experian’s North American headquarters in Costa Mesa, Calif., receives the results of all news events that involve mergers & acquisitions (M&A) or other linkage-related events.  Hundreds of triggers are received each day and reviewed for relevance by the Experian team.  Over the last 12 months, 99.2 percent of the M&A updates made by the team were updated in file the same day they were announced.  All of these updates are available to customers in real-time.

So, what is the secret to keeping the data fresh?  There really is no secret – just a lot of hard work and smart folks that continue to drive our capabilities and processes as far as possible.  When you combine these powerful tools and our very talented team, we are able to make the data perform in ways that are unparalleled in the industry.  In fact, if you are a “data geek” like me it is actually rather fun!

Welcome to my inaugural post on the Experian Business Credit Blog. I am often asked how the business credit information we provide to our customers is created and maintained – so this seems like a good topic to start with.

Our data model takes advantage of the strengths and uniqueness of thousands of data sources, ranging from “firmographic” data sources, to public record sources, to Accounts Receivable (A/R) files as well as some specialty data feeds.  Our commercial data repository allows for permanent storage of data from every source exactly as they gave it to us.

Once the data is in file we execute pre-defined rules against every record in file to get the best data element from each source promoted to the composite record that our customer’s see.  Think of it this way, we are able to take the Phone Number from “Source A” and the Industry Code from “Source B” etc.

The Business Identification Number (BIN) is one of the keys to our data aggregation model.  A BIN is assigned to each business information report and that BIN stays with that business location throughout its life cycle and is “retired” if the business ceases operations.  The BIN is also a fundamental component of our corporate hierarchy linkage which allows us to represent business to business ownership within “corporate families.”

The database environment is very dynamic and updates are made to the file throughout each day, most are available to customers in real time.  In fact, in the last 30 days there were 44.4 million updates to our file.  These updates include a mix of automated updates based on sourced data and updates made by our Costa Mesa, CA based Linkage Maintenance team resulting from scheduled reviews of corporate hierarchies and completed Merger and Acquisition (M&A) events.  In addition, our Costa Mesa, CA based Commercial Relations team will make updates based on feedback from interested parties such as customers.

The end result is a file of about 25 million business credit reports that our customers rely on to help them make key business decisions.