D&B Hoovers Helps Accounting Firm Improve Customer Targeting
Headquartered in New York City, this accounting and advisory firm offers specialized services and industry insights to entrepreneurial, middle-market companies and high net worth individuals. The company has offices in major business markets across the U.S. and in select international locations.
Smarter Industry Targeting
Market segmentation is a technique used to help businesses identify profitable segments of a market and to develop marketing strategies that are tailored to the specific needs and preferences of those market segments. Marketers want to understand their addressable market — which industries are most important to their business, and further, which customers are going to be most profitable. This enables them to identify and target the best prospects and market to them more effectively while also allowing the sales organization to align resources and work more efficiently. The results of industry segmentation efforts go beyond sales and marketing and can influence strategies and decisions across the organization.
For effective segmentation, a company needs to learn as much as possible about an industry and its players using insights to help it understand economic issues, trends, forecasting, and regulatory issues.
The firm’s Industry Insights and Data Reporting group is a strategic internal research team that provides guidance to the firm’s marketing and sales organizations. Their work includes industry classification, market analysis, company research, regulatory considerations, and more. To do their job effectively, they depend on timely data from a variety of sources.
“Our drive to enhance our reporting capabilities got a boost as we focused on further innovating our client service approach,” said the firm’s Senior Industry Manager. The industry insights and data that the team uncovers inform the development of strategic road maps and plans for her internal stakeholders. The end goal is to improve client engagement, relationship management, and retention. “As our business has grown, we moved toward a more industry-focused approach,” she explained. “Our growth strategy is centered around targeted industries, building out those sectors, and providing exceptional support to our clients within them. Having a deep understanding of the industries and the companies within them is crucial to our success.”
Anyone who does any kind of research knows that information can be plentiful — sometimes too plentiful for a business to be able to harness it all — or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, extremely difficult to come by. Information must be located, sourced, aggregated, and analysed. Then it must be put into a presentable form based on the needs of the organization and the audience. Research based on complete and timely information, presented clearly, can help a business prosper; but done poorly, the results can be devastating.
Comprehensive Industry Intelligence With D&B Hoovers
The Industry Insights and Data Reporting group leverages D&B Hoovers to power its research initiatives. The Insights and Data Reporting team takes advantage of the solution’s deep resources, which contains information on more than hundreds of millions of businesses. D&B Hoovers provides access to previously unavailable or difficult-to obtain industry insights. D&B Hoovers gives the team the ability to be more thorough in their research and reporting, so that in turn they develop more strategic industry segmentation and create more effective customer targeting plans. The team also feels they are more efficient by using the D&B solution.
D&B Hoovers provides detailed information on companies including:
- Industry classifications (e.g. NAICS codes)
- Financial data
- Industry and competitor analysis
- News and insights
- Professional contact information
- And more
Through an intuitive, dynamic user interface, the team can incorporate the information into their research so their client teams can make more informed business decisions.
“The information we gather is hugely important to our leaders and teams,” the Senior Industry Manager said. “We need to be able to see which clients are in each industry, to be able to look at timely, accurate financial reports, and then compare to the market to see the larger views. We can see more information in one place, and the insights D&B Hoovers provides into regulatory issues and changes is especially important.”
The firm uses a variety of solution capabilities for its needs, including analyst research, market visualization & segmentation analytics, competitor insights, and advanced financial insights. The comprehensive intelligence provided helps with TAM analysis, as well better understanding the state of the industry and its players, especially important a changing market environment.
Better Insights for Better Results Across the Firm
By making greater use of the offerings available in D&B Hoovers and accessing information sources previously unavailable, the Insights and Data Reporting Group has transformed their industry research and reporting.
“The insight reports we’ve been able to create through D&B Hoovers give us the added ability to find the extensive information we need,” the Senior Industry Manager said. “The industry classification capability is huge for our team and the industry leaders we support. We’re able to see a wealth of information about clients by industry. We have better access to and understanding of economic issues, including trends, forecasts, the economy, regulatory issues, and competitor activity, so we have a more encompassing view across the industry. It gives us a more holistic and comprehensive approach.”
The Senior Industry Manager said her team has benefited greatly from the efficiencies derived from access to the insights in D&B Hoovers. “We’re working more efficiently and faster,” she said. “Files can be uploaded for faster NAICS designations and D-U-N-S® Number lookup. We can pull together a consumer and industrial products report in a third of the time it used to take us, even with the other work we’re doing. Further, we’re able to go more in depth with the reporting we provide to the different industry team leaders, dramatically increasing the value of our team’s services to the business. Hoovers is providing the comprehensive support we didn’t have before so that we can provide even more support to the organization.”
Dun & Bradstreet data is also helping to align efforts between the firm’s marketing and sales teams as the business strategy evolves. Marketing uses D&B Hoovers to identify contacts and leads for sales, and the sales team uses D&B Optimizer for Salesforce to enrich their Salesforce data to better align with the research that the Insights and Data Reporting Group team provides.
The Insights and Data Reporting Group’s advice is simple. “Dig in! At first, we were unaware of the power behind D&B Hoovers. There’s so much that this tool offers!”
We like to share our customers’ successes and inspire other teams that face similar challenges. Due to the sensitive nature of some customers’ businesses and their data strategies, we respect their privacy and do not identify them by name. Similar results are not guaranteed. Dun & Bradstreet does not validate accuracy of customer statements made in customer stories or spotlight articles.