Information Today
Volume 17, Issue 7 • July/August 2000
Dun & Bradstreet Introduces D&B Family Tree Finder

Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) has announced the release of D&B Family Tree Finder, a Web-based service that helps users identify corporate linkages and business-to-business conflicts on potential and existing clients, regardless of industry.

D&B Family Tree Finder is a solution for client-oriented businesses such as law firms, advertising/PR agencies, and professional consultants. Environmental organizations can use it to link businesses to corporations known to be past and/or present environmental offenders. According to the announcement, the foundation of D&B Family Tree Finder consists of one of Dun & Bradstreet’s strengths: the D&B D-U-N-S Numbering system, which tracks organizational hierarchy within corporate families.

“D&B Family Tree Finder is an essential resource for Cadwalader’s conflicts-checking research. We routinely use information provided by D&B to understand corporate family relationships and to surface potential conflicts of interest before taking on new business. Conflicts-checking research must be thorough, and the global scope of D&B Family Tree Finder is especially valuable as this information is critical when dealing with international businesses,” said John H. Kruse, director of conflicts administration at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, an international law firm.

D&B Family Tree Finder links a business’ D&B D-U-N-S Number with headquarters, branches, parents, and subsidiaries to instantly identify corporate family trees and to help management resolve conflict-of-interest issues more easily. Because D&B maintains the world’s largest business database, updated more than 1 million times a day, D&B Family Tree Finder can help protect the integrity of client relationships in a timely manner. D&B Family Tree Finder searches for the corporate family information necessary to uncover potential conflicts of interest with fast, Web-enabled access to D&B’s global business-information database.

“Establishing new client relationships presents many new business opportunities, as well as potential conflicts of interest,” said Philip Russom, director of the Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Service at Hurwitz Group. “Usually, client-oriented firms learn about conflicts of interest when it is too late—after lawsuits are filed by competing clients. It has become imperative that organizations aggressively research complete details of corporate linkage before legally binding contracts are signed, so they can prevent conflicts of interest and stimulate organic growth.”

This key feature helps customers improve their decision-support system, quickly qualify potential new clients, research hierarchical corporate family trees, and pinpoint exact relationships within large corporate entities. Searches can be conducted based on a principal’s name alone as well as a principal’s name within a specific company. Legal librarians and research managers can conduct searches of more than 15 million global businesses—both publicly and privately owned—from the D&B Marketing File, including over 5 million records with complete corporate family detail that connects directly to D&B.

“D&B Family Tree Finder leverages D&B’s corporate linkages, allowing much easier evaluations of potential or existing clients to manage potential conflicts more effectively,” said Andre Dahan, president of D&B North America and eccelerate.com. “Businesses already use D&B information to make more informed decisions. Now companies can easily access D&B’s database of quality business information to help them ascertain potential conflicts of interest and to resolve them before they become a serious issue.”

Source: Dun & Bradstreet, Murray Hill, NJ, 908/665-5000; http://www.dnb.com.


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