Equifax 2008 Annual Report Download - page 9

2008 ANNUAL REPORT 7
“ Customer centricity is integral to
how we run our business. We have
implemented full relationship plans
for all our major customers.”
PAUL SPRINGMAN
Corporate Vice President,
Chief Marketing Officer
customers now have access to the
entire breadth of employment informa-
tion as well as credit and demographic
information for their decisioning needs.
Michael Shannon: Our unique data
differentiates us from all other competitors
in the commercial space. For instance,
we manage the Small Business Financial
Exchange (SBFE), which includes credit
information from leading U.S. small
business lenders, leasing and credit card
companies. These companies rely on us
to provide them with commercial credit
data, scores and analytics necessary
to make informed and accurate lend-
ing decisions, as well as improve their
portfolio management. In addition,
we are significantly increasing our
non-financial trade data and providing
credit information on sole proprietors,
giving our customers a more complete
picture of the companies with whom
they want to do business.
How are LEAN and other efficiency
processes being implemented globally?
Rick Smith: Over the past year, we have
focused hard on improving our processes
to more efficiently serve our customers.
LEAN is being led by our Global Opera-
tions Center of Excellence. To date, we
have implemented 35 projects throughout
the Company. We have completely
embraced process improvement so we
can continue to deliver our solutions at the
lowest possible cost. Examples include:
•฀฀Account฀Boarding฀–฀50฀percent฀
improvement in time to board new
USCIS customers
•฀฀Custom฀Marketing฀Projects฀–฀40฀percent฀
improvement in customer fulfillment time
•฀฀Exception฀Handling฀–฀80฀percent฀
reduction in time for handling client
exception documents
Dann Adams: Continually improving
our operational efficiency is critical in
our effort to deliver strong operating
margins. We have changed procedures,
improved the performance of our
platforms, and empowered our staff to
take cost out of the business. Many of
these processes are customer facing. For
instance, improving our new customer
onboarding time by 50 percent favorably
increases customer satisfaction and
accelerates our time to revenue.
As an important pillar of your strategy,
how will analytics and Technology
Services contribute to revenue growth?
Michael Shannon: Success in business
means new tools which help customers
make highly informed decisions that
support their growth. Because of the
breadth and depth of our commercial
trade and credit data in the U.S., we
have developed the financial industry’s
most predictive credit risk score. By
combining this risk score with consumer
data on the business principal, our
blended score significantly improves
customers’ decisioning. Another example
has been the successful rollout of our
Corporate Hierarchy and Linkage, which
provides our customers with powerful
insight into the backgrounds and inter-
relationships of the companies with
which they do business.
Rudy Ploder: We have benefitted from
technology transfer of our proprietary
decisioning platforms, such as Citadel™,
which we brought from Canada to
the U.K. Experto, which originated in
Argentina, is now our standard decisioning
platform throughout Latin America. These
technologies have accelerated our ability
to quickly distribute highly valuable and
unique data to our customers.
“ Our advisory board has contributed
significantly to the development of
many new products and services,
and is always a clear voice as we
formulate the strategy for our business.”
BILL CANFIELD
President
TALX