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D&B Business Verification

Welcome to the Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) Business Verification offer.  D&B is your premiere source for global data validation and matching to a D-U-N-S Number. This Business Verification offer is tailored to meet your specific data needs for Sales and Marketing, Supply Management, Business Analytics, and other business applications.

The D&B Business Verification service includes an API for direct programmatic access, as well as, integration within Microsoft Office. Using this data set, you can validate and correct data against D&B’s Global Database of 270+ million businesses using D&B’s patented D&B Entity Match system. The service gives a single complete and correct picture of the business entity by assigning a unique identifier (a D-U-N-S Number), which links related companies, helps avoid record duplication, and streamlines disparate data into a single customer view.

D&B’s Entity Matching runs through a process that includes many phases (Cleansing, Parsing, Standardizing, Candidate-Retrieving and Evaluating).  The result is a unique and accurate picture of a business entity.

Eleven data points are returned.

  • Company Name
  • Address
  • City
  • State
  • Postal Code
  • Country Code
  • Phone Number
  • Status
  • Confidence Code
  • Match Grade
  • Remarks

The data dictionary describes the data elements in more detail.

The cost of the solution is per record but you can submit a list of companies for any transaction. The total cost will be calculated and must be confirmed before the deduction is made from your balance.

NOTE: You will not be charged if your search criteria results in no matches.

Accessing the Business Verification Template

From the Business Solutions Application:

  1. Sign in.
  2. Go to Premium Data Solutions.
  3. Expand Business Verification.
  4. Select Download Business Verification Report.
  5. Download the D&B Business Verification template from the Microsoft Office Store.

From a new Excel workbook:

  1. Select the D&B Business Verification template from the Excel template explorer.
  2. Sign in and click Continue.

Running Business Verification

  1. Delete the sample records to run the initial verification on the records or delete the D-U-N-S Number from the records to rerun the verification.
  2. Load the business names and addresses into the template.
  3. Complete the following input Fields:
    • Company Name is required, with a maximum of 240 characters. The Company Name may be the Legal Company Name, Executive Name, Trade Style, or Doing Business As Name.
    • Street Address is optional, with a maximum of 240 characters.
    • City is optional, with a maximum of 64 characters.
    • State is required when the country is the US, with a maximum of 64 characters. Either state abbreviation or province may be used.
    • Zip Code is optional, with a maximum of 16 characters.
    • Country: Required. Must be the 2 digit ISO code which can be found on the Country Code tab
    • Phone is optional, with a maximum of 50 characters. Do not include formatting or punctuation.

    4. NOTE: To add more rows, simply input information in the next row and the template will reformat to include additions. There is a maximum of 500 records per Business Verification processing.

  4. Once all of the records have been added, click Run Verification.

    5. NOTE: Data Quality (DQ) checks will be performed on all records to ensure the Company Name and Country Code fields are correctly populated and that all characters are ISO08859 compliant. Any records that fail DQ are marked with Data Error Status and are not sent to D&B for verification.

  5. The verified data is returned in the following output fields:
    • Total Records: The number of input records on file (matches).
    • Unmatched/Data Quality Errors: The number of records that either had an input data quality error or did not receive a D-U-N-S Number through the cleansing and matching.
    • Confidence Code >=8:The number of records that matched at a high Confidence Code of 8 or greater.
    • Confidence Code <=7: The number of records that matched at a low Confidence Code of 7 or less.
    • Status: This field displays the result of the Business Verification for each company where Matched = has a DUNS Number, Data Error = the input record had errors, and No Mathc = D&B has no matching information.
    • D-U-N-S Number: The nine-digit, numeric value assigned by D&B to uniquely identify business entities.
    • Confidence Code: A numeric value from 0 (low) to 10 (high) indicating the level of certainty at which this possible candidate was included in the result set.
    • Match Grade: A textual string that identifies the compound rating comprised of one rating letter per type of data scored by a match engine (A=Same, B=similar, F=Different, Z=Null).
    • Remarks: Displays error results related to the Data Quality Checks, No Match, and Errors

    6. NOTE: In the Business Verification tab, input data will be overwritten with D&B data. The Combined Output tab merges the input and output data.

  6. Save your results. Save the entire workbook when you have completed all Business Verifications or save each Combined Output tab before running another Business Verification.

    7. IMPORTANT: The data is not automatically stored. Saving the worksheet is the only way to preserve purchased data.

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