Dun & Bradstreet, a leading global provider of business decisioning data and analytics, today introduced the COVID-19 Impact Index, a new resource that addresses the urgent needs of business leaders to better understand the real-time impacts of the pandemic on companies and their network of suppliers and customers.
The index is the latest resource developed by the company to support UK businesses during the pandemic, helping to assess credit, supply chain and sales pipeline risk across their global portfolio and to identify opportunities to support business recovery. The analysis is based on evolving local conditions and ranks a company’s level of risk and potential business disruption in comparison to others on a scale of 1 to 100, with 1 being the highest risk. The index is designed to identify supply chain disruption, credit and collections risk, and to help protect revenue.
Analysis of the latest available data sources, including Dun & Bradstreet’s own commercial information, found businesses in Northern Ireland are most affected with an Overall Business Impact score* of 35 compared to 49 in England, 63 in Scotland and 70 in Wales. The latest analysis shows that the South West and East Midlands are the most impacted regions with the North West and North East currently seeing less impact to date, but the rankings are changing regularly. Unsurprisingly, industries exposed to the most risk and disruption include food and beverage and accommodation; telecommunications and public administration are the least impacted sectors at present.
“The aim of our COVID-19 Impact Index is to provide our clients with a view of how the virus is impacting their network of partners, customers and suppliers,” explained Chris Laws, Head of Product & Strategy at Dun & Bradstreet. “Gaining more visibility of the ‘ripple effect’ on businesses across different regions and industries can help companies as they assess the impact of the pandemic on their operations and develop recovery plans for the future.”
The Dun & Bradstreet COVID-19 Impact Index, which is based on client feedback, supplements Dun & Bradstreet’s risk scores and analytics capabilities and provides a view of the potential impact of the pandemic on a business’ operational activity, as well as its network of suppliers and customers. The overall ranking is based on analysis against five core metrics:
- Company Location Disruption Index – An assessment of a business based on confirmed COVID-19 cases across geographical regions.
- Company Industry Disruption Index – An assessment based on the expected impact to the industry in which the business operates.
- Company Business Health Index – An assessment of business health using Dun & Bradstreet’s Failure and Delinquency scores. The Failure Score predicts the likelihood a business is going to fail in the next 12 months and Delinquency Score predicts how likely they are to pay on time.
- Company Impact Ranking – An assessment of the expected impact of COVID-19 on a specific business entity, using a combination of the above three indexes (Company Location, Industry and Business Health).
- Overall Business Impact Index – An assessment of the expected overall impact of COVID-19 on a business, based on the Company Impact Index (impact on the business itself) and analysis of the Company Impact Index of companies in their supplier, customer and partner network.
More information about Dun & Bradstreet’s COVID-19 resources for businesses is available here.
* Please note that this is based on analysis completed on May 15, 2020 and the index will be recalculated regularly based on the latest available information
