By Sam Tidswell-Norrish, International CMO and Mike Conlon, Global Head of Business Development, Partnerships and Alliances
Collaboration has always been at the core of our business. Throughout Dun & Bradstreet’s 178-year history, we’ve shared our expertise and repository of business information to help countless enterprises mitigate risk and make faster, more intelligent decisions.
Today, Dun & Bradstreet is differentiated by the scale, depth, diversity and accuracy of our constantly expanding business database, known as our “Data Cloud” that contains comprehensive information on more than 364 million businesses. We work closely with our partners and clients to use this information to enable them to navigate their future and stay ahead in a truly competitive market.
For almost two centuries, we have adapted to the ever-changing needs of our clients and the ever-changing need to invest in technology and data.
Data is being generated at a speed never seen before – and the velocity is only increasing. Worldwide data will grow 61% to 175 zettabytes by 2025 from 33 zettabytes in 2018. Firms of all shapes and sizes are realising the necessity of data-driven strategies for success in business today. Over 60% of the world’s GDP will be digitised by 2022 and that means firms will see significant impact, if they do not adapt in time.
Together with our partners, we want to further unlock the value of our data to accelerate growth for our clients.
Collaboration is crucial
Working with partners and building a network of trusted relationships has always been at the heart of what we do at Dun & Bradstreet. And collaboration is perhaps more important today than ever before.
Businesses around the world are facing a hugely complex landscape, whether it’s economic uncertainty, disruptive new competitors and technologies or the unknowns created by the coronavirus pandemic.
Data has always held enormous value. For decades it has helped businesses to make the right decisions and address their challenges.
And with constant innovation, organisations can access more meaningful insights, at the speed they need.
We are developing new solutions to help our clients meet their ever-changing requirements. One of the ways we do this is by collaborating with expert partners to deliver what is needed, fast.
While we already have partners in place, we are accelerating our collaboration efforts even further. This will enable our partners and clients to drive value from our data more quickly – and help organisations around the world to thrive.
Accelerating progress
Experience matters.
To help businesses get the most from our data we are working with a wide range of partners, each a leader in their field, from SaaS technology providers to workflow automation experts. For instance, our work with technology partner and software and solutions company, Quantexa, is all about discovering new ways to combat financial crime through market-leading data and network analytics.
We are combining the expertise of these forward-thinking software companies with the knowledge and skills of our own specialist data and analytics teams.
Our experts will collaborate closely with our partners: guiding them, advising them and using their deep technical and market knowledge to help these digital trailblazers to flourish and provide the best solutions for our shared clients.
Agility will also be critical, whether it’s having a lean in-house team or creating an infrastructure that allows us to work together.
That means being able to provide partners with access to the Dun & Bradstreet Data Cloud, through APIs and data blocks i.e. data that is saved in fixed chunks with a unique identifier – for real-time insights that they can translate into business decisions.
That way, our partners can be smart, agile and decisive, moving at speed and with confidence to turn today’s challenges into tomorrow’s opportunities.
Keeping pace
There’s no question of how important data is to the future of business – and we need to collaborate to unlock new intelligence for organisations around the world.
But what’s already very clear is that through collaboration, D&B will accelerate our responsiveness to new needs, accelerate our partners’ growth and accelerate the results of the services we jointly offer our end clients.
Look out for more details on how our partner programme is evolving in 2020, turning data into a world of opportunity and moving towards a bright, digital future much faster.
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