digibyte - Why D&B's NetProspex acquisition matters
- Summary:
- Marry D&B's massive financial database with NetProspex database of contacts within businesses and you have a powerful combination that delivers real value.
Last Thursday, Dun & Bradstreet announced its acquisition of NetProspex. Where Dun & Bradstreet maintains detailed financial and other data about businesses, NetProspex has built a massive database of contacts within businesses.
Think of NetProspex as an alternative to LinkedIn for sales and marketing professionals. NetProspex uses a number of methods to identify people. It collects data from social media, business cards and other sources. It has a master data management and scrubbing tool to ensure contacts are correct and complete. Anyone who needs accurate contact information knows this is a valuable service.
I first ran into NetProspex when they produced their 2011 Social Business Report. (PDF) I particularly liked their ranking of the top/least social professions. Just knowing that accounting was tied 5th from the bottom as one of the least social jobs has saved more than a client or two of mine from wasting money on social media marketing initiatives to those professionals.
Having said that, I know Den Howlett takes a different perspective, noting that the UK profession is in transition, with many practices feeling the cold wind of change and the need to operate more as advisors than mere bean counters and compliance geeks. He cites KPMGs foray into the mid-market as indicative of where professionals are looking for new pastures.
This lack of social and technology awareness is something I’ve even testified about when I went before the Pathways Commission on the Future of the Accounting Profession a couple of years back. That said, I think the profession has had the wakeup call but I’m still not seeing much change yet. Yes, there are some notable firms but not that many rank and file accountants use social media for work.
Why it matters
- Deals like this are notable as they show that the collection, cleansing and sale of big data are indeed valuable.
- Firms like NetProspex will continue to be acquisition candidates as savvy businesses seek to lock up data – it’s the new competitive advantage.
- In a time when computing power is now massively abundant and cheap, better firms will seek to use the limitlessness of modern IT to parse more than internal transaction data. They will seek additional, third-party data to complement their own and find insights faster than competitors.
- Data, not machine tools or industrial capacity, will be the key asset of the new economy and smart firms will want to acquire the data, the people who collect it and the folks who can make sense of it.
- This particular deal makes a lot of sense for D&B as it helps marketers choose which companies to target and, using NetProspex data, which specific people within those firms to contact. If this becomes an automated capability, this could save sales professionals and marketers a lot of work. Let’s see.
For D&B’s take on the deal please click here.
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