In my first blog posting I mentioned credit reports were the credit story of a business.  In this posting I’d like to provide you with some insights on the raw materials that are brought together to become the chapters within the credit story.

You may think it’s simple to compile information to create the story.  However that’s far from the reality.   There’s no tool that easily links payment information, public record filings or collection experiences from thousands of suppliers.   There’s no magic tool that scrubs and standardizes all the information.   If you’ve ever tried to combine data from multiple customer databases where there’s not a common link you’ve experienced the painful reality of what it takes to create the story.   The story is in the data but putting it together is the challenge.

At Experian, a team of magicians (a.k.a. data analysts and technology experts) come together and create tools that sift through information.  Through these tools and a bit of magic we determine what can be brought together to begin the story for a new business or add a chapter for another.  At Experian this process occurs within our BizSource^SM database using our TrueSearch^SM matching engine.    In my next blog I’ll share my thoughts on these powerful tools.

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.