Isabel Gomez Vidal, Dun & Bradstreet

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Isabel Gomez Vidal

Chief Revenue Officer

Dun & Bradstreet

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Isabel Gomez Vidal, Dun & Bradstreet

Isabel Gomez Vidal

Chief Revenue Officer Dun & Bradstreet

Isabel Gomez Vidal, Chief Revenue Officer at Dun & Bradstreet, discusses the company's long history and services for a diverse customer base, focusing on growth, risk mitigation, and compliance through D-U-N-S business identifiers. The significance of reliable data in AI is emphasized, along with the partnership with IBM for analyzing supplier chain risk and visibility.

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What are some of the ways that Dun & Bradstreet is helping customers with AI use cases in their enterprise? add

What are some of the key ways in which AI is changing businesses moving forward? add

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Isabel Gomez Vidal, Dun & Bradstreet

>> Welcome. Today we're going to talk about some more AI use cases and how to make AI work for your enterprise. And this is, by the way, just an incredibly important topic right now as we're reaching somewhat of a pinnacle in terms of people moving into actually trying to find value for AI. So joining me today is Isabel Gomez Vidal, a CRO at Dun & Bradstreet. So tell us about yourself and tell us a bit about Dun & Bradstreet.

Isabel Gomez Vidal

>> Sure. So I'm the Chief Revenue Officer for Dun & Bradstreet, responsible for the end-to-end, go-to-market activities, and customer engagement model. And a little bit about D&B, believe it or not, we've been in business for 180 years and we are the largest information business company, data and analytics, serving a very large and diverse customer base from very large enterprises all the way to small businesses. And we operate across all industries, from banks, insurance companies, to corporations, all the way to public companies and government institutions, and really helping customers through a wide range of use cases and customer persona. So we're engaging and having conversations with the chief data officers, CIOs, head of marketing and sales, all the way to head of compliance and third party risk. And there are really three things that we help customers with. One is growth and revenue acceleration by helping them to understand who they could do business with and what is the total addressable market. Second is risk mitigation, helping institutions to understand who they can extend credit to and what is the credit worthiness of the vendors that you're doing business with, or their suppliers, or their customers. And third is help businesses to stay compliant. When you think about the large proliferation of regulation that we live... is surrounding all of us today, we help customers to understand who they can do business with. Because think about reputational risk and all these areas around us. And at the core of Dun & Bradstreet, we have a crown jewel that we call the D-U-N-S. And those are business identifiers that are used by millions and millions of end users to really understand that the business that they have and they're doing business with is a legit business. And when it comes to AI, that becomes extremely key and entrenched in terms training models.

>> So everybody's in the AI right now.

Isabel Gomez Vidal

>> Yes.

>> But no one can explain to me many times when I have people on my podcast and interviewing them for other things, what's the value that they're finding within AI? So how is AI changing your business moving forward?

Isabel Gomez Vidal

>> Yeah, look, I think there's a lot going on right now in our lives, both at work with our customers and our employees, and at home with our children and our families. And the rise and the emergence of AI is really impacting our lives radically, and changing and exponentially changing all our business model across all industries. Whether you are in healthcare, retail, financial services, media, telecom, you cannot ignore it, right? AI is opening tremendous opportunity in terms of the business outcomes that you can achieve as you think ahead. But AI doesn't sleep, AI doesn't eat, and is on 24 hours. And I think over the last 12 months we've crossed the threshold between perception and reality when it comes to AI data and businesses. And so I think data, data, trusted data and verifiable data is at the core of this conversation. And it was very interesting, David, I was talking to a CEO of a large AI company and I said, "What is the biggest challenge you have right now when you're interacting with your customers and your large language models?" And he said, "Isabel, we're running out of data and we need more trusted data to learn from." And I said, "Really?" Think about trillions and trillions of data in the open web, but the question is, can it be trusted? Can it be verified? And do I have the right to use it? So at D&B, given that we are a data company doing business with customers and sourcing that data for very ethical vendors, we take that at heart. And we've been experimenting with many customers right now through... We launched actually 12 months ago, D&B.AI Labs, where we are in a very self-safe environment, able to try to make that data available and power up the impact that we can have. We are launching a number of initiatives when it comes to AI to enable, to democratize our knowledge and intelligence of our data and the insights that it can provide.

>> Yeah, what I love about what you say is what I tell my students, I always tell them, this is not an AI problem, it's a data problem. At the end of the day, we have to get our data right to get the AI right, because it learns from the data. And ultimately it's refreshing to hear someone say that because people are always talking about different AIs and talk about large language models, things like that. And at the end of the day, it's some work to get your data in shape to make it usable for AI. So I heard through a bird that you guys are using IBM Watsonx. How are you using IBM Watsonx as a force multiplier for your business?

Isabel Gomez Vidal

>> So you said something really important, force multiplier, but let me give you a little bit of background of our relationship with IBM. So we've been partnering with IBM for a number of years, both we are a huge customer of IBM technology across D&B, but also IBM is a customer of D&B using our data across their enterprise data master data management for multiple use cases, supply, sales and marketing use cases, et cetera. And when we were thinking about how can we make our data more available to end users, to customers, we thought, "Who could it be better than actually powering our data through Watsonx Orchestrate? And you think about for us, IBM is a trusted brand, is a technology company that is forward-thinking, has brought a huge amount of innovation, and they think responsibly about AI data, and is one of the few companies, if not only the one company that actually has identifying models for third party, which is really important to us.

>> Absolutely. And the thing is, what my clients are talking about right now, they need to use or basically pick an AI provider that's going to provide them with a true force multiplier. And I always tell them, you need to look at the value of the partnership that you're moving into. The technology you leverage now is going to basically dictate how you're going to leverage the technology for 10 or 20 years into the future. So how do you pick an AI partner like IBM? What do you look for? How do you basically manage that relationship, and how do you define the future?

Isabel Gomez Vidal

>> Yeah, so look, it's all about trusted and verifiable data and technology. And when you think about IBM, to me what it comes to mind is innovation, trust, responsibility. We both have very common values. We have both very strong brands. We've got a large customer base, and it's important that you partner with institutions that are going to amplify the role that you play in society. And I think IBM is one of them.

>> Yeah, it's a great company, but ultimately we have to look at what the technology provides in how to move things forward. So it was a trusted relationship that you depended on. So in other words, it was the trust into the company as well as the viability of the technology, as well as applicability to your use case?

Isabel Gomez Vidal

>> All the above. And just to give you an example, just to ground what we're doing with them, we actually came with this idea of, "Wow, having transparency on supplier chain and the risk and visibility on suppliers is top of mind, right? Bearing in mind everything that is happening. What is the reputation of the supplier that you are choosing? Do they have the reputation and the ESG characteristics that you want? How can I onboard suppliers in a faster way?" And so we thought we've got really relevant data for that use case. And if you think about IBM has thousands and thousands of vendors and suppliers, so how can we enable IBM to actually select for that use case, and converse with our data and solve some of the issues when it comes to procurement and selection of third party? And so now they're using their customer one, using Ask Procurement that we launch, which is powered by Watsonx Orchestrate, I'm proud to say that. And we're now making this available to all our joint customers.

>> Last question and probably the most important question, what advice would you have to organizations that are looking to create this journey, and truly create partnerships, selecting technology, looking at the use cases to solve? What's the one thing that they should know going into this journey?

Isabel Gomez Vidal

>> It's difficult to say just one thing, but be thoughtful, be ethical, be responsible, and make sure that you have a clear line of sight of what the ultimate outcome is and what you want to achieve. And then make sure that you're partnering with vendors and companies that have the same values to you so that you can be successful in that journey.

>> This is amazing because as we're moving into AI, the successful use cases are there, but they're hard to find. And it's amazing to hear your journey and your journey with Watsonx and IBM, and picking a partner, and really kind of taking these use cases to the next level. And this is what it's all about. Winning the little battles that are going to win the larger war where we're able to use AI is a true innovative force multiplier for a business. And I think you guys have found it. Well, thank you very much. Enjoyed this conversation. Don't forget to check us out. Don't forget to check out IBM Watsonx. Thank you.

D&B Ask Procurement powered by IBM watsonx Orchestrate

D&B Ask Procurement powered by IBM watsonx Orchestrate

Using trusted data to fuel responsible and sustainable AI growth