Quantified Benefits of Clean, Unified Data: Highlights from a Total Economic Impact™ Study

Forrester Consulting Study Illustrates How Dun & Bradstreet Helped One Company Achieve 208% ROI

If you’ve ever wrestled with fragmented customer and supplier data, you know the frustration. Disconnected systems, duplicate records, and manual processes don’t just prevent you from working efficiently; they can cost your business dearly, starting with missed revenue opportunities, higher operational costs, and increased risk. Clean, unified data and proper data governance have become a strategic necessity.

A recent Total Economic Impact^™ (TEI) study by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Dun & Bradstreet, shows how transformative effective data management can be. The study focused on a building product manufacturing company using Dun & Bradstreet’s data management solutions. Forrester’s evaluation framework concluded that the company achieved a net present value (NPV) of $11.8 million over three years and a 208% return on investment (ROI). Here’s what drove those results.

The Challenge: Integrating and Breaking Down Data Silos

Before implementing Dun & Bradstreet’s solutions, the company featured in the study faced a daunting reality. Decades of acquisitions had left them with a highly fragmented technology environment. They had over 1.2 million unique records spread across five CRM systems, and teams relied on manual processes to reconcile data. Siloed data — which refers to information that is isolated within a single department, system, or application — was a serious impediment to strategic planning. Cleaning and matching records across just a few locations could take months. 

Data chaos affected more than speed and convenience. It limited the organisation’s capability to identify cross-selling opportunities and manage supplier and compliance risk effectively. In practice, the company was operating without a clear picture of its customers and suppliers, which undermined growth and raised exposure to avoidable risk.

The Transformation: From Chaos to Clarity

Everything changed when they invested in Dun & Bradstreet’s data management solutions. By leveraging the D-U-N-S^® Number as a unique identifier, the company reduced its customer and supplier master from 500,000 account records to 130,000 active entities. This helped accelerate CRM consolidation, empowered sales teams with a unified view of customer relationships, and strengthened supplier negotiations.

With clean, enriched data in place, strategic business reviews became more rigorous and evidence based. Go-to-market strategies evolved with clearer prioritisation. Customer engagement deepened because teams could see relationships more holistically and act with confidence. The organisation also began using this data foundation to support AI initiatives and advanced analytics. What was once a fragmented mess became a reliable engine for growth and innovation.

The Benefits: Real Numbers, Real Impact

The financial impact of this transformation is striking. Over three years, the organisation realised $17.5 million in benefits against $5.7 million in costs, resulting in that 208% ROI. Gains came from several areas that compounded over time.

• Incremental profit from new sales totaled $5.9 million. Unified customer data enabled a 2% revenue uplift. Sales teams closed higher-margin deals that were 10% more profitable in half of all cases. Greater clarity on accounts and hierarchies helped representatives pursue opportunities with better targeting and fewer dead ends.
• Supplier management and spend optimisation delivered $5.7 million in savings. Better visibility and pricing consistency helped the organisation avoid $2.1 million in fraud. The team also achieved $1.3 million annually in pricing optimisation. With improved supplier data, procurement could standardise terms, negotiate more effectively, and monitor risk with far greater precision.
• CRM consolidation reduced costs by $2.6 million. By decommissioning 80% of its five CRM systems, the company eliminated redundant software, support, and maintenance expenses. This cut complexity for users and simplified administration for IT, which improved adoption and data hygiene.
• Sales efficiency improvements contributed $2.4 million in productivity gains. Clean data reduced time spent on territory planning and internal reconciliation by as much as 50%. With fewer manual fixes and less guesswork, sales teams could invest more time in discovery, relationship building, and strategic selling.
• Data management efficiencies saved $906,000. Automation of record maintenance and cleansing replaced manual data work. The organisation redeployed seven full-time data analysts to higher-value activities, which accelerated decision-making and reduced errors.

Beyond quantified benefits, the organisation gained insights that reshaped executive priorities. Leaders discovered that 50% of revenue came from just 4,500 customers. This visibility changed how the company allocated resources and how it engaged across multiple layers of customer organisations, including executive stakeholders. Cross-functional collaboration improved as sales, customer success, and procurement operated from a unified customer view.

The quality and structure of the data also accelerated AI adoption, pushing analytics maturity forward rapidly.

The Costs: A Necessary Investment

Transformation required investment. Over three years, the company spent $3.4 million on professional services and licensing and $2.3 million on internal implementation and operations. These costs covered solution architecture, data quality assessment, golden record creation, integration with enterprise data platforms and middleware, and ongoing access to the data management platform.

Internally, teams dedicated time to system integration, data quality, CRM consolidation, process alignment, change management, and user training. Allocating these resources created a durable foundation for cleaner workflows and better outcomes across the enterprise.

Connecting the Data to the Bigger Picture

Data drives decisions, but many organisations struggle to trust their data or to use it effectively. The findings in the TEI study demonstrate that investing in data management brings measurable financial returns while reducing risk and creating operational resilience. Clean, unified data supports CRM consolidation, strengthens supplier negotiations, enables smarter sales planning, and fuels AI initiatives that depend on high-quality inputs. When teams share a consistent view of customers and suppliers, collaboration improves and leaders can act with confidence.

Ready to See the Full Study?

What you’ve read here highlights the core results and themes from the Forrester TEI study. The full study goes deeper into methodology, risk adjustments, and scenario modeling. If you are building a business case or roadmap for data modernisation, the details will help you estimate impact for your own organisation.