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Scenarios for Using D&B

This topic describes how D&B might be used. You might use D&B differently, depending on your business model. This topic includes the following scenarios:

• Building and Growing Current Customer Relationships
• Acquiring New Businesses or Customers
• Managing Customer Satisfaction and Account Planning
• Searching D&B for New Account Information

Building and Growing Current Customer Relationships

A company can increase market penetration across its existing customer base by determining how many relationships the company already has within a corporate family structure. Sales managers and representatives can use D&B D-U-N-S numbers to view the organizational hierarchies of clients and aggregate account attributes at each level.

For example, a sales representative plans to sell computers to 20 business locations and he discovers that there are locations for this company that he has not yet contacted. In another situation, the sales manager might want to see a rollup of opportunities and the potential revenue for each subsidiary and location for a specific company on a worldwide basis.

Acquiring New Businesses or Customers

Because a sales organization is always looking for more leads to new business, sales professionals can access company information in the Siebel D&B database, allowing them to generate prospects in their territories.

With D&B, the sales representative can query the Siebel D&B database using criteria to target new leads. The sales representative can query using demographic data, revenue profiles, or other criteria. After generating a list of leads, the sales representative can automatically add the companies and contacts to their company's accounts list. These promoted accounts and contacts are automatically updated when D&B updates occur.

Managing Customer Satisfaction and Account Planning

Standardizing customer information about the D&B D-U-N-S number gives you a means for house-holding your customer data and eliminating duplicate customer records. This elimination increases your ability to manage existing customer relationships because all opportunities for a customer are linked to the same customer record.

Add D&B's corporate family linkage, and you have the ability to manage and plan for customers at a local and global level. For example, you might want to see a roll up of all opportunities and potential revenue for all companies and locations related to a particular company worldwide.

Searching D&B for New Account Information

Sales professionals can access the D&B database in real time to find and retrieve new D&B account information that is immediately available for use within Siebel Sales. This information includes company demographic, corporate linkage, and address data maintained by D&B.

For example, a sales representative discovers a new opportunity, but the representative cannot find the account in either the Siebel account list or the D&B account list. Instead of creating a new account, the sales manager performs a real-time D&B search to obtain up-to-date, quality information that can be used to automatically establish a new Siebel account. Consequently, the sales team is provided with valuable information that they can use when working on the new opportunity.