This case study describes how accounting and consulting provider BDO USA uses DNBi to cut through its data overload and reveal actional insight on clients.

1. CASE STUDY
National Accounting & Consulting Firm
Relies on DNBi for Customer Clarity
BDO cuts through its data overload to reveal actionable
insight on clients
BDO USA provides accounting and consulting services via
49 domestic offices. Its offerings include assurance, tax,
financial advisory and consulting services to a wide range
of publicly traded and privately held companies.
Challenge:
Controlling data overload
While having seemingly limitless data might be a good
problem to have, data without actionable insight is
not. That’s the situation in which BDO found itself in
the mid-2000s, when it reexamined how to rein-in the
overwhelming amount of data at its disposal.
“We had so much information, but we didn’t know
what to do with all of it,”says Laurence Goldberg, BDO’s
National Director of Receivables Management. “We serve
clients across the spectrum of industries in the United
States, from small private companies to billion-dollar
public and private organizations. We needed to develop
a methodology to consistently use the data to identify
credit insight regardless of business size and type.”
The main challenge for BDO lay in addressing data
overload, establishing a new methodology around how
that data was used, and achieving internal acceptance
of the methodology. Goldberg started from scratch,
assessing what BDO was already doing – and not doing –
with its data.
“I challenged D&B to prove their value to me,”Goldberg
says. “We were spending a significant amount of money.
I said, ‘You could provide all this data, but if it’s not
actionable data, it’s useless.’”
Solution:
DNBi gives BDO leading-edge insight
The introduction of DNBi in 2004 proved the solution
Goldberg and BDO were seeking, and the company
became an early adopter. For the first time, the company
could evaluate how it used its data and how to make it
actionable. The switch to DNBi instantly set BDO apart
from its industry peers.
D&B worked with BDO to develop a methodology and
modeling plan for evaluating credit insight relative
to BDO’s business needs. A consistent approach to
credit insight was paramount; Goldberg and his team
effectively incorporated the system into BDO’s overall
client acceptance approach. With support from D&B, BDO
built a new statistical model that combines DNBi’s scores,
including PAYDEX and the Financial Stress Score. The
model is now used for welcoming new commercial clients.
August 2013
“We had so much information,
but we didn’t know what to do
with all of it.”
- Laurence Goldberg, BDO’s National Director of
Receivables Management

2. “I’m looking for objective data that can be provided to our
offices across the country when they are onboarding new
clients,”Goldberg says.
DNBi offers a suite of solutions to address a number of
BDO’s business needs. For instance, the company uses
Decision Maker when examining potential clients, and
uses Account Manager and Portfolio Risk Manager when
examining existing clients and the overall “health”of
BDO’s client portfolio.
Goldberg creates a D&B Scorecard that can plug into the
company’s PeopleSoft application. The D&B score reflects
the external universe, says Goldberg; that is, the score
represents D&B’s assessment of a client based on its
credit experience with other companies. Conversely, BDO
develops its own credit score, which represents a client’s
credit experience with BDO. Then BDO examines the delta
between both scores.
ROI:
Creating customized scorecards, developing
relationships
BDO continues to work with D&B to derive actionable
insight from D&B products and services.
“For us it’s the ability to create customized scorecards that
are unique to our business model,”says Goldberg. “We’ve
refined it over the years, but I’ve had the benefit of some
very talented support folks from D&B.”
Through the relationship with D&B, BDO continually
assures a consistent and comprehensive approach to its
credit insight management processes utilizing the DNBi
solution. D&B support staff further add value to DNBi by
helping Goldberg’s team better understand and use the
product to optimize BDO’s credit insight management
performance.
August 2013
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