A white paper, “Best Practices for Leveraging D&B in Oracle E-Business Suite”, written in partnership between Hub Solution Designs and Dun & Bradstreet. Covers best practices in using D&B information in supply management in the Oracle E-Business Suite.

1. Supply Management
Solutions
Best Practices for
Leveraging D&B in
Oracle E-Business Suite
White Paper
by Dan Power
Founder of Hub Solution Designs, Inc., a management
and technology consulting firm specializing in master
data management and data governance

2. Best Practices for Oracle E-Business suite means supplier transac-
tions are done more quickly and securely.
Leveraging D&B in
As of October 2009, D&B has over 155 million
Oracle E-Business Suite records in its global database, including 101 million
active businesses and more than 50 million inac-
tive businesses with historical information for
Executive Summary matching and cleansing purposes. Approximately
44% of content comes from Europe, Middle East
Supply chain management in medium-sized to and Africa (EMEA), 38% from the Americas, and 18%
large enterprises continues to be challenging – and from Asia Pacific. The database is updated more
getting it right in these uncertain times is only than 1.5 million times per day.
more critical. The complexity of the recent global
economic turmoil makes companies more de- With D&B supplier information, procurement and
pendent on suppliers than ever before. There's no supply chain executives get the answers to the
room for mistakes, as manufacturers, retailers and “tough questions,” including:
others dependent on suppliers to get business done
race to stay ahead of the competition, increase • What am I buying across my supplier portfolio?
margins and innovate. • Who am I buying from and how much am
I spending?
This paper provides insight into the power of • How do I identify and track risky suppliers?
trusted information in driving better supply chain • Am I meeting my diversity goals and
performance for Oracle E-Business suite customers. reporting requirements?
It offers specific examples of how clean and accu- • Am I buying from preferred suppliers and
rate supplier information can: meeting internal compliance policies?
• Identify savings opportunities Many factors make it hard to answer these ques-
• Increase negotiating leverage tions, but the single largest driver of the challenge
• Achieve diversity goals is incomplete and inaccurate supplier information.
• Minimize supplier disruptions
• Reduce risk • Data on spending resides in multiple systems mak-
• Meet internal compliance policies ing it extremely difficult to manage total spend.
• Duplicate records understate the total spend
Trusted External Data Helps Answer the with each supplier, significantly reducing
Tough Questions negotiating leverage.
• Partial information in supplier profiles forces
The combination of Oracle’s industry-leading E- buyers to guess about critical data such as
Procurement platform with trusted supplier data financial health and diversity status.
from D&B provides a powerful procurement sys- • “Data decay” leads to out-of-date information,
tem for companies of all sizes and types. The seam- leaving companies vulnerable to critical
less integration of D&B supplier insight with the changes in their supply base.
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3. There are three stages to D&B’s supplier informa-
tion management best practices:
“Most organizations do not track and
measure the cost of poor quality of data
on their suppliers. Such poor supplier data
1. Standardize: consolidate supplier data and quality may add up to over 10% of the orga-
eliminate duplicate records nization’s revenue. Supplier risk manage-
2. Enrich: with third party data to gain the most ment is being addressed by every major
complete view of supplier opportunity and risk organization now. enrich IT and D&B have
3. Refresh: maintain the supplier information partnered to provide significant value in re-
ducing the cause and effects of supplier risk.
D&B and the Oracle E-Business Suite With our deep knowledge in Oracle technol-
ogy and procurement domain, we have
Oracle and D&B have been working together since demonstrated to our clients the value of
1999 to integrate D&B’s content with Oracle’s combining D&B’s proprietary supplier risk
applications, through real-time and batch tools management information with Oracle’s
that joint customers can use to access D&B. enterprise-wide supplier-related information
through BI/dashboard solutions – including
P2P transactional details. enrich IT has
In Release 12, Oracle brings the Supplier Master implemented and also seen in many clients
function into the Trading Community Architec- Oracle and D&B integration working
ture, making it possible to use D&B for suppliers as smoothly through the Trading Community
it has been used for customers since Release 11i. Architecture.”
– Arul Murugan, President & CEO, enrich IT, Inc.
Information that Powers Performance
and allows companies to establish a cleansed and
Companies can benefit directly, by designing cost standardized supplier portfolio, and to eliminate
reduction programs or indirectly, by working with duplicate suppliers.
a more diverse supplier base for example. Regard-
less of how the information is used, the result is the Specific data elements include:
same: a stronger procurement and supply chain
foundation and best-in-class supplier information • Legal business name and up to five “Doing
management practices. Business As” names
• Physical and mailing address
With the D&B and Oracle e-business solution, compa- • CEO name and title
nies gain immediate and long-term benefits,including: • Legal structure
• Federal tax ID
1. Better Understanding of Suppliers for • Year started, annual sales and total employees
Better Decisions • Up to six SIC codes
Valuable demographic information means compa- 2. Faster, More Effective Supplier On-Boarding
nies know what they buy and from whom. This
transparency delivers a consolidated view of sup- D&B’s Data Integration Toolkit is built into Oracle
pliers and spends from multiple, disparate systems, Customers Online as a data stewardship tool,
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4. allowing users who are responsible for setting up not only looking for exact matches or similar
new suppliers to access D&B data in real-time. strings of text in the company name or address,
it can also match between legal name and
This ability delivers immediate insight into the “doing business as” names, and even between
identity and stability of suppliers with a detailed current name and address and historical name
profile of each supplier, including headquarters and address.
and parent company identification, risk indicators,
payment information and failure scores. 6. Compliance and Diversity
3. Managing Supplier Financial Risk D&B makes it easier to comply with Federal
Compliance Reporting Requirements, prepare for
D&B provides information to better manage risk in internal audits, or uncover new supplier opportu-
the supplier portfolio, including items like the nities. D&B provides access to over 4.3 million
debarment indicator, the Supplier Evaluation Risk diverse suppliers with the following socio-
Rating, the Severe Risk indicator, the Bankruptcy economic classifications to help build and grow
indicator, the number of Suits, Liens, and Judg- supplier diversity initiatives: Women, Minority,
ments and the D&B Rating. Ethnic, Veteran, Small Business, etc.
This allows companies to perform risk analysis 7. Strategic Sourcing
across the entire supplier portfolio, to identify sup-
pliers likely to go out of business, and to track risk Often, negotiating leverage is lost because several
across the portfolio (and how it changes over time). different business units of the company are buy-
ing from several different business units of the
4. Managing Reputational Risk supplier. Assessing what is currently bought and
from whom, including the rollup of purchases to
In the light of well-publicized issues with lead the ultimate parent companies of suppliers can
painted toys and toxic toothpaste, supply chain provide a much stronger negotiating position.
management today is an area of huge potential
risk to corporate reputations. Conclusion
Forward-edge organizations use D&B to monitor Supplier-dependent companies need insight and
Tier-1 suppliers, and Tier-2 and Tier-3 suppliers to intelligence that can power more proactive, effec-
gain visibility into the second layer of companies tive responses to the changing business climate.
selling to the immediate supply network. With Oracle R12, customers can take advantage of
the pre-built integration of D&B services to match
5. Supplier De-Duplication and enrich supplier information in batch or
real-time. The powerful combination increases
De-duplication is a major part of ensuring the the speed and quality of decision making, while
quality of supplier information. D&B typically reducing process costs and lowering risk.
finds 20 – 30 percent more duplicates than sophis-
ticated pattern-matching programs, because it’s
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5. Common Use Cases
Scenario One: Batch Standardization and The D&B account team will review the pres-
Enrichment of Supplier Information ence/absence of key fields to check that all fields
are present and are populated correctly, as well as
reviewing the deliverable against a QC checklist
The process for using D&B to standardize, enrich
and the client’s project requirements, before meet-
and refresh supplier information in Oracle E-Busi-
ing to review and sign-off on the deliverable.
ness Suite R12 is straightforward and leverages
standard, Oracle-provided functionality:
3. Use D&B Import Adapter and Bulk Import (Im-
port Batch to TCA Registry) – Oracle provides two
1. Extract Data – If the company is already “live” on
programs, run one after the other, to load D&B
Release 12 and all of its suppliers exist in the TCA
data into the TCA Registry at the party level.
Registry as parties, an Oracle-provided program in
the Trading Community Manager responsibility
called “Generate Request List for D&B Batch Load” The first is a request set called the “D&B Import
creates a fixed-width text file including the fol- Adapter.” It loads data from the flat file provided
lowing data elements: D-U-N-S® Number, Party by D&B into the Bulk Import interface tables.
Name, Address1, Address2, Address3, Address4, City, To move the D&B data from the interface tables
State, Country, Postal Code, Party ID, Phone number. into the main TCA tables requires a simple
step: running the Bulk Import (Import Batch to
TCA Registry).
If not yet live on Oracle R12, the customer can
create an extract file that contains the required
input data from whatever system currently houses Scenario Two: Real-Time Verification and
the supplier data. On-Boarding of Suppliers
2. D&B Performs the Cleanse, Match and Enrich- Many organizations have standardized on D&B as
ment Process – Once D&B receives the file, the a key part of their process for validating and
D&B Program Manager will provide receipt confir- on-boarding new suppliers. For example, the
mation, as well as a project plan and an estimated U.S. government requires a D-U-N-S Number
completion date. from all organizations doing business with or
receiving grants from the Federal Government.
The Program Manager and the programming team And a large number of industry associations
will analyze the data and prepare for the match recommend D&B for business identification and
and append steps. The Entity Matching and electronic commerce.
D-U-N-S Number Assignment steps will be per-
formed. The team will drive D-U-N-S Number The process flow in the Purchasing or Payables
assignment on the Top 100 unmatched records modules would likely be very similar to how most
based on spend. The Program Manager will check Oracle customers do it today, with the addition of
the D-U-N-S Numbers on the Top 100 matched using the Data Integration Toolkit within Oracle
records based on spend, and collaborate on high- Customers Online to enrich the supplier parties
dollar unmatched records. after they’ve been added to the TCA Registry. This
function would typically be performed by a data
The D&B programming team will append D&B steward within a data governance team (as part of
data to matched records (based on delivery stan- a supplier master data management effort), or al-
dards) and perform a comprehensive quality ternatively by someone within the purchasing
assurance review of the data extract process. team responsible for setting up new suppliers.
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6. APPENDIX • The D-U-N-S® Number is D&B's unique, nine-
digit, location-specific business identification
number, which D&B assigns as a means of identi-
D&B’s DUNSRight® Process fying and tracking companies globally throughout
their lifecycle. Once assigned, a D-U-N-S Number is
D&B’s definition of data quality includes four not reused nor reassigned to another business.
dimensions: accuracy, completeness, timeliness
and consistency. It uses this definition in its Used by the world's most influential standards-
DUNSRight process for collecting, aggregating, setting organizations, the D-U-N-S Number is rec-
editing and checking data from thousands of ognized, recommended, and/or required by more
sources every day. With DUNSRight, customers get than 50 global, industry and trade associations,
deep, detailed and relevant insight that can drive including the United Nations, the European Com-
better decisions. mission, and the U.S. Federal Government.
The DUNSRight process consists of: • Corporate Linkage uses the D-U-N-S Number to
link members to corporate families. Corporate link-
• Global Data Collection: aggregated data from age occurs in the D&B Global Database when one
thousands of sources to provide both breadth and business location has a financial and legal respon-
depth of business information. The world’s largest sibility for another business location. Corporate
and most comprehensive business information Linkage enables D&B customers to view their total
database includes up to 1,500 data elements on any risk or opportunity across related businesses.
given company, depending on the availability of D&B’s global business database has more corporate
information on the company. More than the obvi- family structures than any other data provider
ous elements (business name, address, telephone worldwide, with over 2.5 million families and 11
number, bankruptcies, and business registrations) million family members.
include industry profile, NAICS codes, SIC codes,
financial statements, small business indicator, • Predictive Indicators use statistical analysis to
commercial credit score, financial stress score, geo rate a business’s past performance and to indicate
code, domestic and global linkage, payment expe- how likely the business is to perform that same
riences, and news and events to deliver a much way in the future. Predictive Indicators leverage
deeper, more relevant profile. the analytical capabilities of experienced PhDs to
build predictive models with unique D&B data
• Entity Matching: D&B’s proprietary method for capabilities, including industry-specific knowl-
matching various sources’ business information edge, financial and Payment Trade Experiences
against its global database. This process allows for on numerous private companies, and extensive
and corrects variations in spelling (e.g., IBM vs. In- historical information for risk modeling and risk
ternational Business Machines), formats, trade trend analytics purposes. The key output from
names and addresses, and executive’s data from these analyses is D&B’s unique scores –
disparate sources (e.g., a state business license, a Commercial Credit Score, Financial Stress Score,
Federal 10K filing, and a Yellow Pages listing) with Marketing Pre-screen Score, Supplier Evaluation
the appropriate D&B record. Risk Rating, PAYDEX® Score, etc.
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7. About the Author: Dan Power is the founder of Hub Solution Designs, Inc., a management and technology
consulting firm specializing in master data management and data governance. Contact him at
powerd@hubdesigns.com or visit www.hubdesigns.com.
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8. Decide with Confidence
D&B Solutions
Risk Management Solutions
Sales & Marketing Solutions
Supply Management Solutions
E-Business Solutions
www.dnb.com
White Paper: © 2009 Hub Solution Designs, Inc. Reprinted with permission.
Appendix: © 2009 The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation.
D&B and the D&B logo are registered trademarks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.