D&B Tools Help Cleanse and Consolidate M247’s Three Databases
Dun & Bradstreet tools help cleanse and consolidate three separate databases, enabling connectivity provider to align its sales and marketing activities.
Background:
M247 is the UK’s fastest growing connectivity and internet infrastructure provider, formed through the acquisition of three companies – M24Seven (cloud-hosting), Metronet (specialist connectivity) and Venus Business Communications (fibre connectivity). It is based in Manchester, operates from six offices and has data centres in the UK and Europe and presence in 38 cities globally. The group has 250 employees, and 34,000 customers in more than 120 countries.
Challenge:
Following the last of the three acquisitions, M247 was faced with three separate customer databases (two on Salesforce, one bespoke), three sales teams, and no single-view of its range of customers.
To continue its organic growth, the group wanted to create a single view of every one of its customers. This would enable it to restructure its sales approach and refine its marketing strategy.
“Having a single customer view with additional firmographic data and intelligence on these customers, means we can focus on segmenting customers based on their potential for future growth,” says head of business insight, Roger Watson. “What we wanted to understand was the opportunities for cross-sell, which areas were most profitable, and where future growth might come from.”
Without this clarity, Watson continues, M247 would be unable to realise the potential value of its customer base. It also risked aligning the wrong calibre of Sales and Marketing resource to opportunities.
Solution:
Watson has 15 years’ experience of working with Dun & Bradstreet products. “D&B has real strength in linking data between different business entities,” he says. “The breadth and depth of data, plus the ability to access, analyse and interrogate this data, allows M247 to adjust its go-to-market strategy to continue to drive business growth.” These features allow M247 to build out a new data strategy, quickly and cost effectively. “It’s almost Data-as-a-Service,” says Watson.
To create a single view of its customers, M247 uses four Dun & Bradstreet products:
- Market Insight: analytical access to entire UK dataset to allow customers to profile their customer base against the UK universe so they can slice and dice and find look-alikes of their best customers. Analyse and segment key markets and target customers across channels
- D&B Telecoms Buydex: a fact-based, data-driven model that classifies customers and prospects based on their overall ICT Spend Capacity
- D&B Hoovers: online company research tool especially designed for the busy sales professional that can get instant access to the data and critical sales intelligence they need, to enable them to close business faster
- D&B Credit: industry-leading business credit reports and next-generation risk intelligence to make faster, smarter credit decisions
“M247 understands the importance of quality data,” says Watson. “As a group, our mission statement is ‘intelligence led decision making’.”
Organisational Impact:
The result is, for the first time, a single 360° view of each M247 customer. This allows the group to segment its customers based on their potential for growth rather than company size.
“It enables us to continue to drive market-leading growth and profitability,” says Watson. “It means we’re performing ahead of the market.”
Focused sales approach: Customers are now segmented into three categories: Key accounts, Incubators (with the potential to grow to become Key accounts), and Online. This makes the sales organisation more effective and efficient, with the right sales resource allocated to the right account.
More relevant and effective marketing: With a clearer picture of customer type, M247 is now more effectively targeting customers with relevant products and services. It has a much clearer picture of our expected pipeline, and UK and international growth opportunities.
“All the evidence shows that it is working,” says Watson. “Cross-sales are up, growth is up, and we have a strong pipeline of future opportunities.”