Manufacturing Industry
Discover how Dun & Bradstreet's data and analytics help manufacturers with digitalisation, sustainability, supply chain resilience and customer centricity.
Data to power smarter decisions
in the manufacturing industry
The manufacturing industry is undergoing a major transformation due to technological change, increased customer expectations, inflation, resource shortages, supply chain bottlenecks, cyber security threats, complex regulations and geopolitical instability.
Manufacturers need to be agile, forward-looking, and make decisions based on sound, up-to-date data to manage risk and remain competitive.
Our global, comprehensive data and local expertise enable manufacturing companies to strengthen business resilience, increase efficiency and make smarter decisions in the following areas:
How we help
Discover how Dun & Bradstreet works with manufacturing companies to solve the challenges of digitalisation, supply chain resilience, sustainability, and customer centricity.
Data strategy as the backbone of digitalisation and AI-supported processes
Relevant and accurate third-party information is not only key to minimising disruption and strengthening supply chains, but also enabling modern sales and operations strategies.
By leveraging our verified, comprehensive data, detailed market analysis and industry benchmarks, manufacturers can:
- Optimise and automate their business processes,
- Identify trends at an early stage and develop innovative strategies to capitalise on these,
- Facilitate the integration of new technologies.
Ultimately, leveraging Dun & Bradstreet's rich and reliable data builds a solid foundation for digital transformation and AI.
Creating a resilient, stable supply chain
By providing companies with accurate information about their suppliers and partners, as well as macroeconomic data, Dun & Bradstreet helps strengthen supply chain resilience.
Detailed supplier analysis enables better supply chain planning and optimisation which can strengthen adaptability and improve the ability to respond proactively to challenges.
By assessing the financial stability, compliance, and reliability of immediate and tier-n suppliers in this context, risk is minimised. If there is potential for disruption, this can be detected at an early stage and alternative vendors or strategies can be identified before too much impact occurs
ESG is no longer optional!
Data from Dun & Bradstreet helps manufacturing companies understand and create transparency around ESG in their supply chain.
Our comprehensive, global data is enriched with a range of ESG risk information including GHG emissions, extreme weather events and human rights violations, minimising the need for suppliers to self-report. Furthermore, when combined with other key data points like compliance and tier-n supply chain illumination, manufacturers can understand wider risk from immediate suppliers and those further removed to cultivate a resilient supply chain.
This provides a solid base for corporate sustainability reports, complying with regulatory requirements and meeting customer and stakeholder expectations.
Putting the customer at the centre of the strategy
Detailed company data and insights into customer profiles, behaviours, and segmentation enables greater personalisation of offers and more targeted sales and marketing initiatives.
By becoming data-driven throughout all prospect and customer touchpoints, manufacturers can optimise prospecting and improve buyer journeys, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates and associated revenue growth.
Global market and trend analysis from Dun & Bradstreet also helps manufacturers to react quickly to changes in customer behaviour and adapt products and strategies accordingly. By combining our company information with our financial risk data, manufacturers can be sure that they are targeting and working with low-risk customers.
Example Sub-Sectors
Dun & Bradstreet works with manufacturing clients in all the different sub-sectors around the globe. Below is a sample of challenges we support in just three of those.
Automotive
The automotive industry is being driven by ‘industry 4.0’, and M-A-D-E (Mobility, Autonomous Driving, Digitalisation of Product, Electrification). Both are transforming the way vehicles are designed, built, marketed, and sold, including areas such as environmental impact, and human resource management. Data-driven decisions are crucial to navigate challenges like growing competition from the Far East, rising costs, resource shortages and regulatory requirements.
Chemicals
Chemical manufacturers are being impacted by regulation and expectations around ESG, and looking to partner with a limited number of sustainable suppliers. In addition, macroeconomic factors such as energy and raw material costs, as well as subsidies in other markets, jeopardise profitability. Customer centricity, supply chain resilience, shortage of skilled workers and cyber security are also creating challenges for the industry. Digital transformation (including new technologies and supporting data) accompanies and enables many of these trends, along with the evaluation of alternative locations or suppliers.
Machinery
In the machinery industry, growth is slowing in mature markets, while emerging markets with cheaper production opportunities are seeing significant expansion. Manufacturers must adapt their strategies to secure their market position, often through product or service differentiation, new technology and digital transformation. The industry is also under pressure to adopt sustainable practices to meet regulation and buyer standards. A shortage of skilled workers is a further challenge. Dun & Bradstreet helps companies make smarter decisions to prevail through these trends, by providing transparency into market conditions and business partners.
Customer Stories
By connecting its customer records in Salesforce to enrichment data from Dun & Bradstreet, Bystronic was able to increase the completeness and accuracy of its customer records.
“This solution enables us to increase the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. We can use it to identify visitors to our website and know exactly which companies are interested in Bystronic”
Danish Crown has also been able to reduce the false positives needing attention by approximately 80%. Just as importantly, they now have a deeper understanding of who they are really doing business with and can better safeguard the reputation of themselves and their members.
“Because we are owned by a collective of over 5,000 Danish Farmers, compliance is something that is very important to us. It’s not just about regulation; it’s about our reputation too.”
With an individual scorecard from Dun & Bradstreet, the global life science group Bayer has automated its credit checks to a very high degree and optimised its monitoring. Depending on the credit limit, Bayer specifically requests different risk data from customers at Dun & Bradstreet. The data is sent directly to SAP's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) via an interface.
"Because both our own internal data and external data from Dun & Bradstreet are incorporated into our scorecard, our risk assessment becomes much more robust. This makes a significant contribution to the high quality of our risk assessment. In clarifying these and other questions, we relied entirely on the technical expertise of Dun & Bradstreet – and we did an excellent job," Wenzel sums up.
Bosch is aware of its responsibility for climate change. Sustainability, especially in the supply chain, is an essential part of the company's culture. Bosch carefully monitors all emissions and is actively involved in working with suppliers who contribute to sustainability. For example, Bosch has several programs to support suppliers in validating their environmental management. Through an interface in the system, the data required for this is provided by Dun & Bradstreet and continuously updated.
"Improved transparency in the supply chain, real-time data and alternative sources of supply are key factors," summarizes Dr. Thomas Schulte.
How data can help manufacturers make smarter decisions
For the manufacturing industry data can provide unprecedented transparency, which significantly supports strategic decisions around cost, disruption, targeting and third parties.
ESG Insights: ESG regulations, customer expectations and manufacturer’s own motivation to ‘do better’ in this space place high demands on sustainability management, the implementation of which is often complex and demanding. Dun and Bradstreet's ESG data makes it possible to meet these challenges with minimal effort and maximum reliability.
Tier-N Supply Chain: Manufacturers depend heavily on well-functioning, reliable supply chains. Insight into the upstream supply chain – i.e., a manufacturers’ suppliers’ suppliers (tier-n-suppliers) – offers full transparency here and minimises risk of disruption or incompliance. Dun & Bradstreet can support here with a wide variety of risk factors and rankings on both companies and regions.
Mastering Data: Master data management has a direct impact the bottom line, with manufacturers potentially missing out on opportunities or risks with poorly managed, inaccurate data. Manual structuring and validation of data is time-consuming and often frustrating. Dun & Bradstreet can help with matching and automated enrichment of existing data, as well as providing additional data to support master data management efforts across the manufacturing company.
Strategic Market View: Insights into market penetration, prospect and segmentation and behaviour, and supplier characteristics are an essential part of a strategic market view. Dun & Bradstreet provides comprehensive information that supports manufacturing companies in various challenges – such as better prospecting, improving customer experience, third-party evaluation as well as geographical site planning.
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