Manufacturing

Your company is dependent on many different people — customers to buy products, employees to provide excellent customer service, and vendors to provide services. However, it can be challenging to have an accurate picture of all aspects of vendor relationships. By having clean and connected vendor data, you can more quickly deploy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. Challenges of Knowing Your Dependency on a Single Vendor Because departments often make their own vendor contracts — hardware, services, office supplies — the relationships are typically not stored in one place and often are in siloed databases. Human resources, marketing and product development could all have independent contracts with the same cloud-software provider for file sharing, and not be aware of the other relationships. It becomes even more confusing because vendor contracts for the same company may have different addresses for satellite locations. Human error also comes into play with typos in addresses and company name spelling mistakes. Companies may merge with each other. Or an office may move to a new location. This makes it challenging, if not impossible, to see a clear picture of your entire relationship with each vendor. Why Vendor Dependency Matters When you know your dependency on a vendor, you can understand your risk and better negotiate volume discounts. If a vendor that provides 45 percent of the materials needed to manufacture a specific product runs into supply issues or is facing serious financial issues, your company knows the impact from the start and can make alternate plans. You can also contact the cloud-software provider used by three departments and ask for preferred pricing based on an accurate number of users.  If a vendor is also a customer, knowing your dependency lets you assess the balance of trade between the two companies, meaning how much you buy from the company compared to how much the company purchases from you. Correct vendor profiles are also essential for successfully using ERP. If the vendors are not connected or inaccurate data is imported, the ERP cannot show all relevant data for an organization in one place. You must start the ERP process with clean and connected data for ERP to improve the efficiency of your business and its resources. Otherwise, the deployment process takes longer, and you won’t get all the available benefits an ERP provides. Three steps to preparing vendor data for ERP deployment: 1) Clean your data. You must first clean your data for a consistent view of vendors across all files. Manually going through vendor files would be exceptionally time consuming and error-prone. By using Experian data and technology, you can quickly use databases of company information to correct errors and other issues in the data. 2) Enrich data for an accurate view of relationships. The next step is linking the businesses together across files and departments using a single unique Identifier. Experian’s Business Identification Number (BIN) product, makes this process accurate and quick. Your company can then see a real-time view of current and past orders with each supplier. You can also add additional data, such as credit scores and other supplier-related data. 3) Create a company hierarchy. Even though all the contracts are technically with a single company, departments may be working with a specific division or location for their services. This becomes important if divisions are sold or reorganized. By using a tool, such as Experian’s Corporate Linkage product, you can link the companies into a corporate hierarchy to provide an even clearer view of the relationships. Start getting ready for using ERP software by cleaning, enriching and linking vendor data. The next time you see a vendor mentioned on the news — data breach, bankruptcy, scandal — you don’t have to wonder what it means for your company. With a few clicks, you’ll know your dependency and can start planning. To learn how Experian can help you clean, enhance and link vendor data to speed up ERP deployment, visit www.experian.com.  

I had the pleasure of speaking with Kelly DeBoer recently. She is a Product Manager at Experian working in Business Information Services. Kelly leads product strategy for our business marketing products. In this Business Q&A we talk about B2B marketing trends and how Experian is helping business clients get the most out of their marketing initiatives. Gary: B2B marketing has changed significantly in the last five years. What are some of the important trends that you're seeing? Kelly: What we're seeing in the B2B space is really what we've seen in the B2C space for years, and that is, our clients are really trying to gain as much insight into their not only existing clients but potential clients as well? So you know additional firmographic information, credit information, anything that gives them a fuller picture of their clients, and then not only how to retain their existing clients and cross-sell, but also in terms of prospecting, how to best reach these targets once we've identified them what's the best channels to reach those prospects to get the best response. Gary: Kelly, most of our clients think of Experian Business Information Services as firstly business data and credit risk management. So how are we helping clients with their marketing initiatives? Kelly: With regard to B2B marketing, Experian has a tremendous amount of marketing assets including not only our U.S. Business Database which has over 16 million businesses. We also overlay that with our credit information, so clients can come and tap into this this huge resource to help them with their targeting in terms of selecting by firmographics, employee size, sales volume, as well as credit attributes, UCC filings, bankruptcies, information that can be translated to marketing campaigns. It can be utilized for direct marketing, for telemarketing, for digital applications - social media, email campaigns, analytical solutions, modeling. So it's a vast amount of resources that we can tap into to help with marketing campaigns. Gary: Can you share about some B2B marketing solutions we can look forward to from Experian? Kelly: Experian has a lot on the horizon with regard to B2B marketing. But one thing I'm particularly excited about is our new B2C linkage business to consumer linkage. Ultimately our clients have been coming to us saying you know, we're looking for a way to link our consumer records to any businesses that they may be associated with. So we create a customized linkage system that allows us to take in those consumer records, match them to our commercial repositories, and then provide back information that allows our clients to then not only target that consumer at their residential address but also their business address. So it gives them a chance to cross-sell and up-sell commercial offers as well as their consumer offers. Experian Business Marketing Solutions

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), small businesses account for 99.7 percent of U.S. employer firms and 64 percent of new private-sector jobs. So it stands to reason that the way small businesses go, the economy probably follows suit. One of the biggest challenges for small businesses, however, is the ability to access capital. In order for them to grow, they need money. Many of these smaller firms have limited to no credit history on file. For that reason, it is imperative for lenders and trade creditors to leverage comprehensive data sources (both financial and non-financial), enabling them to make smarter business decisions and help small businesses access credit. It is Experian’s core belief that an open and secure data sharing program is crucial to helping small businesses get the credit they deserve, and it's Small Business Credit Share® program is at the center of this ideal. Small Business Credit Share℠ is a Credit Data Sharing "Club" Small Business Credit Share℠ (SBCS) is a consortium of banks, credit card companies, leasing agencies and other companies that have agreed to provide financial and non-financial data in exchange for exclusive access to data from other contributors. By gaining access to this database, lenders and trade creditors can make more informed decisions, while also promoting financial inclusion and spurring growth within the small business segment. Currently, six of the nation's top ten financial institutions are members, as well as several telecommunications and utilities companies. Small Business Credit Share℠ offers more aggregates (data elements) than any other service of its type. Whereas many lenders rely primarily on summary data (e.g., a credit score and reports of missed payments over the past year), Small Business Credit Share reports include a vast array of detailed credit, financial and non-financial data. As a requirement of membership, members must contribute at least 10 pieces of data on each small business account, such as account types, highest credit utilized, total account balance and payment history profiles. Together, these aggregates provide a much deeper, more meaningful view of a small business than was ever possible when drawing from just a handful of sources. They have also proven to be a far more accurate predictor of credit risk than any other service Membership Provides Benefits to Financial Institutions and Borrowers Alike Small Business Credit Share℠ provides significant benefits to member institutions as well as to the customers they serve. For example, Small Business Credit Share allows members to see the obligations an applicant already has to other lenders. With this knowledge, a lender can make sure an applicant does not become overextended and thus jeopardize their ability to pay back the loans already outstanding. A lender can also generate reports that, when shared with a customer, help ensure that paying back that lender becomes a priority so as to strengthen their credit score. Small Business Credit Share can also help members achieve SBA compliance, as the SBA mandates reporting to "bureaus" for all SBA-backed loans (SOP 50 57). To Get More, Give More As in life, what you can get out of the Small Business Credit Share℠ tends to be directly proportional to what you put into it. The more data members share, the clearer the picture of their small business borrowers becomes, and the smarter credit decisions they are able to make. Watch our Small Business Credit Share Program Overview Video We're encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive reception the Small Business Credit Share has received from the financial industry as a whole and from our member companies in particular. We remain committed to the idea that financial inclusion provides a strong value proposition to the Financial Services community, and believe Small Business Credit Share aligns with that ideal. Small Business Credit Share