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Data Quality

D&B Germany ensures data quality

Continuous data collection: Before feeding data into programs, analyses and reports, a comprehensive data collection and update research process ensures data quality. We use a variety of sources such as new company and relocation registrations as well as debtor and insolvency records for enriching our database every day. We process over 200,000 news articles from the press and internet, as well as more than 800,000 company surveys in our own research centre every year; the D&B DunTrade® Programme processes more than 540 million reports on invoice payment from German companies.


Constant updates: We update more than 1.8 million data records per day from across the world, and 120,000 from Germany alone.

Data quality assurance: D&B Germany collects, stores, and correlates data from the wide variety of sources in a complex process, turning the data into high-quality business information. We apply more than 2,000 different automated checks in the DUNSRight® Process to ensure data quality, along with additional manual random-selection checks. This provides us with a unique basis for serving our customers with a solid basis for sound decisions.

Unique identification: Information gained from the DUNSRight® Process is integrated into the system and matched up to companies. We use the D-U-N-S® Number (Data Universal Numbering System) introduced by D&B for unique company identification - a unique nine-digit identification sequence allocated to each company. This enables us to track down corporate linkages, for example. The D-U-N-S® Number is endorsed and used by the German automobile industry association (VDA) and chemical industry association (VCI) as well as the European Commission and the ISO standardisation organisation.

Actual payment performance reporting: D&B Germany's DunTrade® Programme handles more than 540 million reports on invoice information on corporate payment habits from Germany for storage in our database.