Item: D&B Finance Analytics
Rating: 8
Author: Patrick Murray

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Use D&B reports to analyze financial strength of companies in our client's portfolios, including company's payment experience, financial information (if available), operating history, size of company, etc.. D&B reports are used a complementary information to our own internal analysis to either approve or decline credit limits for our clients.

Pros and Cons

Obtain information on small, privately-owned buyers
Provide information on company's ownership
Detailed analysis on payment experience with company's suppliers

Extending the time you stay logged in. Often I get logged out of the system if I'm away from my desk for a short period of time.
I'd like the country search bar to default to United States, instead of the most recent country I searched within.
Moving ownership details into the "company profile" section of the report - making this more noticeable.

Return on Investment

Improved underwriting of companies that we insure on behalf of our clients
Helped minimize claims that we receive from our customers because we're able to review potentially problematic accounts using D&B.
Helped understand industry trends.

Finance Analytics Performance

Improved our organization's risk analysis as it's helped us avoid insuring potentially problematic accounts, and conversely helped us gain a better understanding of a client's customer portfolio on small, privately-held companies. Helped understand a company's payment behavior to support the credit limit requested by our client. Helped our organization secure more new accounts and garner more premium from customers.

Implementation and Deployment

Overall, easy implementation and deployment of the system. See below for how software has helped credit and collections procedures:
- Helps us understand company's payment behavior, typical monthly outstanding balances, any slow pay trends relative to competitors in the industry.
- Provides us with current and pertinent news articles on our client's customers.
- Notifies of past and present bankruptcies.

Alternatives Considered

D&B Hoovers

I use both of these resources in tandem to provide a detailed analysis of our client's customers. Hoovers provides more detail on a company's organizational structure (i.e. immediate parent companies, ultimate parent companies, etc.). I prefer to use Hoover's if a company's ownership is unclear, or if it might be related to another company in our system. D&B Finance provides a more holistic view of the buyer.

Support Rating

I have never contacted D&B support.

Key Insights

Do you think D&B Finance Analytics delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with D&B Finance Analytics's feature set?

Yes

Did D&B Finance Analytics live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of D&B Finance Analytics go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy D&B Finance Analytics again?

Yes

Other Software Used

D&B Hoovers, Factiva

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited for research on small, privately-owned companies in order to understand a bit about the company's profile (i.e. years in business, number of employees, description of operations, payment experience). Also well-suited for foreign companies where financial information is available. For example, I've found that the D&B reports for companies in Colombia, France, and Italy are very extensive and include detailed financial info.
Not well-suited for large, publicly traded companies as this information is already available in SEC filings.

D&B Finance Analytics Review

Overall Satisfaction with D&B Finance Analytics