We’ve consistently been at the forefront of data sourcing, data cleaning and data management. Through a combination of sourcing data from official registries, third-party partnerships in our home markets and the establishment of the Creditsafe Commercial Data Network comprising of over 30 international data partners, we’ve been able to meet the increasing demand for high-quality international data and insights that businesses need to survive and grow long-term.
In the past 12 months alone, we’ve made significant investments to improve our data in Brazil, China, Finland, Greece, Poland, Portugal and Spain. And we’re currently enhancing our data for Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand – that’s on top of the latest launch of instant online reports for 37 new territories in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Our guiding principle is to empower data-driven decisions anywhere in the world. While we take pride in holding one of the world's largest databases, with over 430 million reports, our greatest pride lies in the quality of the data contained within them.
The Creditsafe Commercial Data Network is a data cooperative of sorts – essentially, it’s a network that brings together business information from market leaders across the globe into a single source. Within the database, business data is validated, standardized and connected. Together, the data offers greater value and potential than if it were separated across disparate structures. The level of participation and data sharing of each partner varies. But the more a partner shares in the network, the higher benefits they themselves get.
“What makes us different from our market competitors is that we don’t just buy data from our partners, it isn’t just a transactional exchange between two parties.” said Paul Beard, International Business Director. “We look after the growth and success of our data partners and so do they. We share revenue with them, give them access to the Creditsafe product suite and at times, enhance the quality and uniformity of their data.”
Despite a growing network, entry for new partners isn’t an open door. Partners are subject to a highly rigorous selection process so we can be confident about data accuracy, freshness, completeness and breadth. Partners also need to be of a similar mindset: collaborative, ambitious and customer-obsessed.
Although the Network acts like a behind-the-scenes mechanism, it delivers real value in the form of reduced customer and supplier risks, stronger cash flow, better regulatory compliance and increased revenue growth.
In recent years, the benefits are particularly evident in Creditsafe’s coveted global group structure data. The increased contribution of corporate linkages and hierarchical data from our partners has expanded the footprint and completeness of this dataset dramatically. In the first half of this year, we’ve increased the total number of unique corporate groups in our database by a staggering 15%.
Similarly, the international coverage of our monitoring and data enrichment services is broadening thanks to the Network, which allows us to deploy the data in more ways than simply delivering reports.
“We pride ourselves on being transparent about the data we hold, from the breadth and depth of data we offer in each territory to the details of our credit scores,” said Howard Roberts, Product Director at Creditsafe. “It’s important that our clients trust us and the data we offer – and you achieve that by being open. In an industry that’s ‘guarded’ about its data, we’ve been able to breathe fresh air into it and that has been well received by our customers.”