LBC: Japan's Largest Corporate Information Database with 12.5 Million Records
The Corporate Information Database LBC is a comprehensive corporate database covering 12.5 million business locations, independently collected and built by uSonar. Developed under the philosophy of "organizing information for every company in Japan," the database contains over 38 million records when including historical data.
Background of Building the LBC Corporate Information Database
In recent years, the pace of environmental change has been accelerating, and redesigning business processes is essential to adapt to this rapidly shifting landscape. Nevertheless, many companies have historically avoided addressing the challenge of business process redesign, attempting to manage without it.
On the other hand, some companies have faced these challenges head-on, viewing them as opportunities to build frameworks for next-generation growth. We understand that these companies did not start from scratch; rather, they built the foundations for growth by optimizing internal resources and effectively leveraging external resources based on existing frameworks.
To support this, uSonar has built and provides the LBC Corporate Information Database to organize and utilize the foundation for sales and marketing activities.
A foundational database must be built to be "Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive." Databases with duplicates lead to wasted efforts through redundant approaches, while incomplete databases result in missed opportunities—a challenge faced by many companies.
By using the LBC Corporate Information Database, you can achieve:
- Consolidation of Duplicate Data
- Integration and Centralized Management of Scattered Databases
- Appending Attribute Information to Customer Data
- Maintaining Data Freshness and Reducing Internal Operational Man-hours through Automatic Corporate Information Updates
- Standardization of Data Entry Rules and Reduction of Data Entry Burden
- Customer Trend Analysis (Profiling)
- Grasp Transaction History and Identify Untapped Locations by Company or Group
- Market Share Analysis
- Creation of Approach Lists
is realized.
A Database Specialized for Customer Data Maintenance and Marketing
The most prominent feature of the LBC corporate database is its volume of 12.5 million records, which is a direct result of its specialization in customer data maintenance and marketing.
For instance, when maintaining customer data, the LBC database serves as a reference guide. If this reference (LBC) lacks sufficient data, it becomes impossible to maintain high-accuracy customer records.
Furthermore, when planning marketing strategies or executing outreach, it is essential to view the entire market to identify untapped segments and non-client companies. This requires a comprehensive database that covers the entire market landscape.
For these reasons, we have built a database containing 12.5 million records. Additionally, the LBC corporate database includes a vast amount of non-private sector data, such as central government agencies, local municipalities, schools, hospitals, public interest corporations, social welfare corporations, and religious organizations. While corporate credit research firms are well-known for their databases, non-private sector data is often less critical for credit assessment purposes. In contrast, because the primary purpose of the LBC corporate database is customer data maintenance and marketing, we actively collect and include this data as well.
LBC Corporate Database Feature (1): Cleansing Expertise
By utilizing our accumulated knowledge (cleansing expertise) during the matching process between your customer database and the LBC corporate database, we achieve a high match rate. This allows for the maintenance of a significantly larger volume of data.
Furthermore, by leveraging our long-cultivated data cleansing technology, we are collaborating to visualize identical and affiliated companies by assigning common keys* and latitude/longitude information to the registry information (over 10 million records) used in statistical surveys conducted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
(Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry Begins Using the LBC Corporate Database)
*: Common Key
A unique identifier used to specify a head office or business location (including sole proprietorships that do not possess a Corporate Number).
1. Textbooks and Dictionaries for Data Maintenance
To maintain customer data, rules for data maintenance must be established in advance. Without management based on consistent rules, data integrity cannot be ensured. However, in reality, database management rules are rarely consistent; they are often inconsistent not only across multiple databases but frequently even within a single database. Under these conditions, data cannot be maintained. Therefore, rules for data maintenance are essential. Please consider the LBC corporate database as a textbook for these rules. By maintaining your customer database according to rules aligned with this textbook, you can achieve data consistency.
2. Matching Dictionary
To apply the textbook's rules to your customer database, matching (reconciliation) between your customer database and the textbook is required. However, since your customer database and the textbook inherently follow different rules, they will not match correctly if you attempt to match them as they are. Therefore, a dictionary (Knowledge Master) is required to bridge your customer database and the textbook. By entrusting your customer data to uSonar and converting the rules according to our dictionary, it becomes possible to match your customer database with the textbook despite their differing rules.
3. Dictionary 1: Historical Information
A common cause of failure when matching databases is the issue of data freshness, such as when one set of data is outdated. For example, if customer data contains an old company name or an old address, it cannot be matched with the LBC corporate database in its current state. Therefore, the LBC corporate database uses historical information as a dictionary. Specifically, by utilizing a master (dictionary) that accumulates past events such as company name changes, relocations, and mergers/acquisitions, we can automatically convert and match customer data even if it contains old company names or addresses.
4. Dictionary 2: Corporate Name Knowledge
Similar to historical information, matching failures can occur because data is entered using abbreviations or easily misspelled company names. For example, cases where "Nippon Electric Company" is entered as "NEC" or "All Nippon Airways" is entered as "ANA." At uSonar, we have accumulated these "data entry habits" as knowledge gained through the matching work we have performed in the past. Even if your company's customer data is entered using abbreviations or common misspellings, using this knowledge allows us to automatically convert them into official company names and enable successful matching.
5. Dictionary (3): Formatting
While this may seem trivial compared to the previous point, minor inconsistencies in notation can lead to unsuccessful data matching. uSonar utilizes data cleansing technology to standardize address formats, such as converting informal addresses into their official registered forms. Furthermore, we can process the conversion of old addresses to new ones, including those resulting from municipal mergers.
As demonstrated above, even if customer data contains typos, omissions, outdated company names, former addresses, or pre-merger information, we utilize our proprietary dictionaries (various knowledge bases) to perform matching against the LBC corporate information database, thereby achieving high matching accuracy.
By using the dictionaries within the LBC corporate information database in this manner, the duplicate detection rate is improved. So, what level of improvement can be expected? While this is for reference only, let us compare the results of deduplicating the business card information entered by uSonar sales representatives—which we have been using as an example—with and without the use of the LBC corporate information database.
When using the LBC corporate information database, 1,038 out of 22,128 records (4.7%) can be identified as duplicates, whereas only 458 records (2.1%) can be identified without it. This difference is attributed to the dictionary that enhances cleansing accuracy.
LBC Corporate Information Database Feature (2): Coding System
The LBC corporate information database groups business locations that have relationships such as headquarters-branches or parent-subsidiary companies. This enables data management at the group level, allowing for the consolidation of sales information by group to grasp gross transaction values, as well as identifying non-trading locations within a group for cross-selling opportunities.
When organizing customer information, linking data related to headquarters-branches or parent-subsidiary relationships becomes extremely important. Without this linkage, it is impossible to grasp transaction amounts at the group level or identify non-trading locations of existing customers to plan outreach strategies.
Generally, a method is adopted where a parent code such as 0001 is assigned to the headquarters, and branch codes such as 0001-001 are assigned to business locations to represent the group. However, with this type of management, the coding system gradually breaks down due to mergers, acquisitions, or the closure of business locations, eventually becoming unmanageable.
To avoid such situations, the LBC corporate information database assigns a unique, immutable code to every business location and adopts a coding system that links relationships such as headquarters-branches or parent-subsidiary companies. This linkage is the reason for the name Linkage Business Code (LBC).
Specifically, the details are as follows.
Rule 1. A unique identification number is assigned to every business location.
First, we assign a unique code (identification number) to every business location. This code is referred to as "LBC." LBC is the name of both our corporate information database and the management code itself. To avoid confusion, we will distinguish between the two: we will refer to the master data itself as the "LBC Corporate Information Database" and the management code as the "LBC Corporate Management Code." Since a unique number is assigned to each business location, the LBC Corporate Management Code is never duplicated and remains permanent.
*1 The actual code consists of 11 digits.
*2 Because the 12.5 million records are based on business locations rather than companies, separate codes are assigned to different sites of the same company, such as a headquarters and a factory (the LBC Corporate Information Database contains data consolidated at the location, company, and corporate group levels).
Rule 2. The Headquarters of Any Business Location Data Is Represented by the Headquarters LBC
For example, regarding the LS Oil Matsuyama Branch (0012), the Headquarters LBC column shows 0007, indicating that it is a business location of LS Oil (0007). Similarly, for LS Oil (0007), the Headquarters LBC is its own code (0007), which indicates that LS Oil (0007) is the headquarters.
Rule 3. The Parent Company of Any Business Location Data Is Represented by the Parent Company LBC
For LS Oil (0007), the Parent Company LBC column shows 0002, indicating that it is a subsidiary of LS Bank (0002). Likewise, the Parent Company LBC column for LS Bank (0002) is 0001, indicating that it is a subsidiary of LS Trading (0001).
Rule 4. The Top of a Capital Group Always Uses Its Own Code
For LS Trading (0001), the Headquarters LBC, Parent Company LBC, and Group LBC columns all show 0001, indicating that it is the top of the corporate group.
Rule 5. In the Event of a Change in Group Affiliation, Only the Grouping Information Is Updated
Even if a change in corporate affiliation occurs due to mergers or acquisitions, only the grouping information is updated, while the LBC Corporate Management Code remains unchanged (the LBC Corporate Management Code is permanent). By keeping the identification number (LBC Corporate Management Code) assigned to the data permanent and only updating the attribute information, we maintain the consistency of the coding system.
By utilizing this code system, you can group the client data entrusted to us and perform data cleansing at both the individual company and corporate group levels.
