D&B, formerly known as Dun & Bradstreet, could be a business school case study about restoring value to a good company that had lost its way. For decades, the $1.4 billion provider of global business information, tools, and insight has supplied data about companies around the world. Customers buy D&B products, such as business information reports (detailed briefings on companies) and business-to-business marketing lists, to improve cash flows, mitigate risks, and increase revenues. But during the 1980s and 1990s, a series of acquisitions and divestitures undermined the performance and brand of the company, and by the late '90s it could no longer focus on its true sources of value. In 1999 D&B failed to meet its revenue and earnings expectations, and shareholders were furious. The company, which is now based in Short Hills, New Jersey, had become an underperformer with underleveraged assets.

That was the problem greeting Allan Z. Loren in May 2000, when he joined D&B as chairman and CEO. Loren had recently retired as the CIO of American Express, another venerable brand-name company, which he had helped turn around. In D&B, he saw a business that had a lot to offer its customers—if it could focus on the...