LBC: Japan's Largest Corporate Information Database with 12.5 Million Records
The LBC corporate information database is a comprehensive business database covering 12.5 million business locations, independently collected and built by uSonar. Based on the philosophy of "organizing information for every company in Japan," the database has grown to include over 38 million locations when historical data is included.
Background of the LBC Corporate Information Database
In recent years, the pace of environmental change has accelerated, necessitating the redesign of business processes to adapt to these rapid shifts. Nevertheless, it can be said that many companies have attempted to avoid the challenge of business process redesign, hoping to simply get by.
On the other hand, some companies have faced these challenges head-on, viewing them as "opportunities to build mechanisms for next-generation growth." We understand that such companies did not start from scratch with new initiatives; rather, they built the foundation for growth by streamlining internal resources and effectively utilizing external resources based on existing frameworks.
To assist in this effort, uSonar has built and provided the LBC corporate information database to organize and utilize the foundation for sales and marketing activities. As a foundation, a database must be built to be "Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive." Many companies face challenges where duplicate databases lead to wasted redundant approaches, while incomplete databases result in lost opportunities.
By using this 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 Operational Burden
- Customer Profiling and Trend Analysis
- Tracking Transaction History by Company or Group and Identifying Untapped Locations
- Market Share Analysis
- Creation of Outreach Lists
Achieve these objectives.
A Database Specialized for Customer Data Management and Marketing
One of the most prominent features of the LBC corporate database is its scale of 12.5 million records. This is because the LBC corporate database is specifically designed for customer data management and marketing purposes.
For instance, when managing customer data, the LBC database serves as a reference guide. If the reference guide (LBC) lacks sufficient data, it becomes impossible to maintain accurate records, thereby preventing the realization of high-precision customer data management.
Furthermore, when planning marketing strategies or executing outreach, it is essential to first view the entire market to identify untapped markets and prospective clients. To achieve this, a comprehensive database that covers the entire market is required.
For these reasons, we have constructed a database containing 12.5 million records. Additionally, the LBC corporate database includes a vast amount of data beyond private enterprises, 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 business databases, data on non-private entities is often less critical for credit assessment purposes. In contrast, because the LBC corporate database is primarily intended for customer data management and marketing rather than credit assessment, we actively collect data on these diverse organizations as well.
LBC Corporate Database Feature (1): Cleansing Expertise
By utilizing our accumulated knowledge and data cleansing expertise during the matching process between your customer database and the LBC corporate information database, we achieve a high matching rate. This enables the maintenance and organization of a significantly larger volume of data.
Furthermore, leveraging our long-standing data cleansing technology, we assist in visualizing identical or affiliated companies by assigning common keys* and latitude/longitude information to the registry data (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 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. Textbook and Dictionary for Data Maintenance
To maintain customer data effectively, data maintenance rules must be established in advance. Without consistent management rules, data integrity cannot be ensured. In reality, however, database management rules are rarely consistent; they often vary not only across multiple databases but even within a single database. Under such conditions, data cannot be properly maintained. Therefore, data maintenance rules are essential. Consider the LBC corporate information database as the textbook for these rules. By maintaining your customer database according to the rules defined in this textbook, you can achieve data consistency.
2. Matching Dictionary
To apply the rules from the textbook to your customer database, a matching process between the two is required. However, since the customer database and the textbook operate on different rules, they will not match correctly if processed as-is. This is why a dictionary (Knowledge Master) is necessary to bridge the gap. By entrusting your customer data to uSonar, we convert the rules according to this dictionary, enabling successful matching between your customer database and our textbook.
3. Dictionary 1: Historical Information
A common cause of failure when matching databases is the issue of data freshness, such as when one dataset is outdated. For example, if customer data contains an old company name or address, it cannot be matched with the LBC corporate information database in its current state. Therefore, the LBC corporate information database utilizes historical information as a dictionary. Specifically, by using a master dictionary that stores past events such as company name changes, relocations, and mergers or acquisitions, we automatically convert and match customer data even if it contains outdated names or addresses.
4. Dictionary 2: Company Name Knowledge
Similar to historical information, matching failures can occur due to the input of abbreviations or commonly misspelled company names. For example, this includes cases where 'NEC' is entered instead of 'Nippon Electric Company' or 'All Nippon Airways' is written as 'ANA'. At uSonar, we have accumulated these 'data entry tendencies' as knowledge through the matching tasks we have performed in the past. Even if your company's customer data contains abbreviations or common misspellings, our knowledge base allows us to automatically convert them into official company names, enabling successful matching.
5. Dictionary (3): Formatting
While this may seem less significant than the previous point, minor variations in notation can also lead to unsuccessful data matching. At uSonar, we utilize data cleansing technology to standardize address formats, such as converting common address notations into official ones. 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, former company names, old 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' of the LBC corporate information database in this way, 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 performing data consolidation on 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 due to the dictionaries that enhance cleansing accuracy.
LBC Corporate Information Database Feature (2): Coding System
The LBC corporate information database groups business locations that have relationships such as headquarters-branch or parent-subsidiary. This enables data management at the group level, allowing you to consolidate sales information by group to understand gross transaction volume, or to identify non-trading locations within a group for cross-selling targets.
When organizing customer information, linking data that shares relationships such as headquarters-branch or parent-subsidiary is extremely important. Without this linkage, it is impossible to grasp transaction amounts at the group level or to 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 all business location data and adopts a coding system that links relationships such as headquarters-branch or parent-subsidiary. This linkage is the reason for the name 'Linkage Business Code' (LBC).
The details are as follows.
Rule 1: A Unique Identification Number Is Assigned to Every Business Location
First, a unique code (identification number) is assigned to every business location. This code is referred to as the "LBC." LBC serves as both the name of the corporate information database and the name of the management code. To avoid confusion, we will distinguish between the two: the master data itself will be referred to as the "LBC Corporate Information Database," and the management code will be referred to as the "LBC Corporate Management Code." Since the LBC Corporate Management Code is assigned individually to each business location, no two locations share the same number, and the number remains permanent and immutable.
*1 The actual code consists of 11 digits.
*2 Since 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 site, company, and corporate group levels).
Rule 2: The Headquarters of Any Business Location Is Represented by the Headquarters LBC
For example, regarding the LS Oil Matsuyama Branch (0012), the Headquarters LBC field 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 Is Represented by the Parent Company LBC
For LS Oil (0007), the Parent Company LBC field shows 0002, indicating that it is a subsidiary of LS Bank (0002). Likewise, the Parent Company LBC field for LS Bank (0002) is 0001, indicating that it is a subsidiary of LS Trading (0001).
Rule 4: The Top of the Capital Hierarchy Always Uses Its Own Code
For LS Trading (0001), the Headquarters LBC, Parent Company LBC, and Group LBC fields are all listed as 0001, indicating that it is at the top of the corporate group hierarchy.
Rule 5: In the Event of a Group Relationship, Only the Grouping Information Is Updated
Even if changes occur in corporate affiliations due to mergers, acquisitions, or reorganizations, only the grouping information is updated, while the LBC corporate management code remains unchanged (the LBC corporate management code is immutable). By keeping the assigned identification number (LBC corporate management code) constant and updating the attribute information, we maintain the consistency of the code system.
By utilizing this code system, you can group the client data entrusted to us by our customers, enabling data consolidation at both the individual company and corporate group levels.
