Continuing my discussion of Dun & Bradstreet’s planned IPO. The firm was taken private by a group of private equity companies in January 2019 and restructured.
The S-1 laid out how the firm has been restructured over the past eighteen months:
- “We immediately reorganized our management and operating infrastructure into vertically aligned business units to increase focus and accountability.
- As a result of this realignment, 18 of the 19 executives, or 95%, and 30 of the 46, or 65%, members of the broader leadership team are new or in a new role, with nearly half of all employees reporting to a new leader.
- Our total employee turnover was approximately 1,500 and our leadership was able to identify and eliminate ineffective headcount resulting in a net employee reduction of approximately 850, or 17% of total employees.
- We will continue to optimize our organizational structure and make targeted hires to build out our team at all levels.”
Other changes include
- Incentivizing long-term contracts in commission plans
- A focus on tracking and monitoring service metrics
- “Modernizing our infrastructure and optimizing our architecture to increase control, create efficiencies, and greatly enhance the ability of our platforms to scale,”
- Expanding their ability to “seamlessly add and integrate new data sets and analytical capabilities into our simplified and scaled technology infrastructure.”
- Increasing their coverage of SMBs and “incorporating new, alternative data sets to expand the breadth of companies covered and depth of information we are able to provide clients.”
- Implemented a Data Watch Program which proactively monitors and repairs issues
- Improved AI capabilities across a broader set of content
According to the S-1, “Enhanced analytics enable us to provide easy to implement end-to-end solutions; by creating configurable, rather than customizable, analytics solutions, we believe that we can increase the adoption of solutions by our clients and expand the size of our client base.”
The reorganization and other changes have resulted in a $206 million annualized run rate savings as of March 31, 2020.
“DNB has been reconstituted into presumably more efficient and responsible operating units,” stated Donovan Jones of IPO Edge. “The problems with the IPO are that it is too early to tell if the reorganization is delivering better results than the previous structure and the firm is heavier with debt.”
In Part IV, I will be covering their financials.