D&B Collaborates With Microsoft To Launch D&B360 For Dynamics CRM

D&B, a provider of commercial information and business insight, has agreed with Microsoft to integrate D&B360, D&B's Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution, with Microsoft Dynamics CRM in both on-premise and on-demand environments. D&B360 will deliver data that has been optimized for enhanced accuracy and completeness — a competitive advantage that increases effectiveness at every stage in the sales, marketing and customer service lifecycle.

Focused on providing BtoB marketers with detailed customer and prospect data to enhance up and cross-selling, D&B360 is D&B's cloud-based, on-demand solution designed to provide data management, cleansing and enrichment capabilities, seamlessly integrating D&B data and other essential business information into CRM applications and other critical customer applications. D&B360 offers D&B's unparalleled business data, including the world's largest database of more than 195 million businesses, 53 million business contacts and Hoover's company research — along with relevant social media and news feeds.

"Our vision is to fuel our customers' sales and marketing growth by providing the insight they need to identify high-value prospects in the most efficient way possible across multiple industries and CRM applications," said Josh Peirez, President of Innovation and CMO at D&B. "Our relationship with Microsoft is an important step in realizing this vision. By powering one of the fastest growing, best known brands in CRM, we're not only expanding the CRM platforms we support, we're also expanding our reach to sales and marketing professionals within organizations ranging from small businesses to commercial enterprises."

Under the new offering, D&B offers point and click access to data to load the next step. Users can also find “lookalikes,” or other prospects with attributes similar to those of target contacts. D&B can reverse engineer data to cross-reference and find more valuable contacts, as well as refresh data.

D&B partnered with Informatica to leverage its cloud-based solution to automate matching. A data stewardship capability enables users to look up relevant prospect and customer matches on demand. Users can automate batch matching and batch refresh synch data at any point in time.

"This relationship is part of our commitment to helping our customers increase sales and customer satisfaction. D&B360 will give our users access to the comprehensive business insight — all from within their familiar user experience. With its instant access to online company and contact-level data, D&B360 will help business professionals focus on the right customer at the right time and help boost overall user productivity," said Bill Patterson, Director, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Product Management.

Within D&B360, users can also leverage D&B data as a parameter to pass through channels like Facebook, Twitter or Google Maps, to enable real-time information that can be bookmarked, to help marketers foster interaction with prospects within the CRM system.

D&B360 caters to the changing customer lifecycle by empowering salespeople will real-time information to reach the right prospects at the right time with relevant messaging to help improve close rates and deals.