5 Key Features Most Company Data Providers Don't Offer

Simone Autiero, 3 November 2023

It’s not easy to source trustworthy, up-to-date data about private companies. Several organisations still rely on sourcing information from LinkedIn accounts, media reports, and/or manual web searches. But this is laborious, time-consuming, and imprecise.

Fortunately, a good company data provider will streamline this process to help you get hold of more, and better, data. On the other hand, many company data providers fall short:

Government business registries, many of which are free to use, often contain out-of-date information. One of the most well-known is Companies House. One downside of using Companies House data by itself is that it’s based on the UK’s registry of legal entities—so you don’t get a dynamic picture of businesses’ people, products, or patents. Plus, the downloadable dataset comes in a bulky Excel sheet containing basic info about thousands of entities. It’s a pain to sort through.
Paid-for B2B sales databases typically emphasise lead generation for sales teams, and tend to be focused on B2B contact information. They’ll contain reams of email addresses, social profiles, and phone numbers—but won’t index key events (e.g. raised funding rounds), employee count growth, financial performance, new patents registered, or other useful bits of information.
Company list providers. Downloading a cheap-and-cheerful UK company list might seem like a good idea at first, but they’re notoriously hit-and-miss. You can also find freely-available ones on the web (like this one), but they only feature the biggest, most well-known, companies. That’s no use if you’re looking for the latest startups or successful local SMEs. And with the paid-for downloadable lists, you may get some email addresses and phone numbers, but there’s no guarantee they’ll be valid.

Unfortunately, you’ll run into a few recurring issues: a lack of updates, insufficient data verification, no enrichment, incomplete information, and substandard usability.

We built Beauhurst’s platforms to solve these issues. Our team of 60+ data analysts (in combination with machine learning technology) do the legwork to source, verify, and enrich our full database of UK private companies. Our platforms contain profiles on all UK businesses. That’s more than 13m companies: SMEs, startups, and established firms.

In this post, we share five key features that set us apart from other company data providers.

Note: Beauhurst’s data can be accessed through four products:

Book a demo with us to find out what these platforms can do for you.

Five features you get with Beauhurst as your company data provider

1. Company data that’s verified and enriched by real people

Data quality should, of course, be a priority. Yet, not all company data providers are up to scratch. Different providers use different information sources. For example, many will only use raw data from Companies House and simply repackage it. But businesses simply upload that data to the register themselves—meaning it isn’t verified and may well be inaccurate.

In contrast, when you use one of Beauhurst’s platforms, the info is not only taken from reliable real-world sources, but we have a team of experts who verify the data (with help from machine learning technology). This gives you a reliable base for making decisions.

We acquire company data from a diverse range of high-quality sources: government registers, the media, international databases such as the European Patent Office, UK businesses themselves—and other places. We piece together the puzzle and create rich company profiles, and we constantly revisit our data to make sure it’s accurate.

You can see the following information (and more) on company profiles:

Financial data, such as annual turnover, pretax profits, and more
Key company events, including whether they’ve raised funds, spun out of a university or participated in an incubator
Patents and where they’re registered (in the UK or abroad)
Influential people, including executives, investors, and their gender balance
Operating addresses, so you know where they actually work and contribute to the economy

With Beauhurst, you have all of this data on every single UK company. You can use it to do diligence before closing a deal, to find opportunities for knowledge transfer partnerships, or to identify companies in which to invest.

For instance, JP Jenkins, the UK’s oldest private share trading platform, uses BeauhurstSales to identify prospects, vet inbound enquiries, and understand whether specific companies are a good fit for the product.

“Beauhurst has been really, really important to us,” says Mason Doick, Head of Corporate. “It’s been vital not only for the valuations, financials and filings metrics, but also to enable us to focus on how we target and review companies that are suitable to build a pipeline of ideal clients.”

2. An advanced search to find the exact companies you need

Many company data providers supply their information through static company lists, spreadsheets, or PDF reports. If you don’t know the specific businesses you’re looking for already, or you want to compare different businesses, all three options are a nightmare.

With any of Beauhurst’s platforms, you get an advanced company search feature. So rather than sifting through reams of irrelevant data, you can simply enter the criteria of companies you’re interested in and you’ll immediately be shown all of the relevant results.

For instance, if you’re an investor, you may be looking for businesses of a specific size, in a specific industry, and with a certain kind of product. With Beauhurst, you can overlap all these criteria to find the exact match:

Location, such as a region or city, or even down to a specific postcode
Current stage of evolution, i.e. whether a company is at seed, venture, or growth stage, or whether they’re established
What the company does—for example, the industry it works in, its SIC codes, and any relevant buzzwords
People, such as the name and contact data of directors, or the number of employees
Funding received, to hone your search to companies that have raised above a certain amount
Significant events, such as whether they’ve spun out of a university
Financials, including their annual turnover, profits, and more

As an example, if you’re interested in companies in Leeds that work with big data and have raised at least £500k, it’s easy to set those specific criteria. This way, you can immediately discover the relevant businesses in the region. It means less time sifting through the data yourself and more time on outreach (or other more valuable tasks).

With Beauhurst, you aren’t limited to just searching for businesses. You can also search for people (our dataset includes profiles of over 20m key individuals), funds, accelerators, and more.

3. Automatic data updates, so you don’t miss anything new

One of the issues with accessing company data through downloadable spreadsheets and PDFs is that it quickly becomes outdated.

As we shared earlier, all Beauhurst data is regularly updated to make sure it remains valuable and usable for our clients. Yet we go one step further, so that you’re notified every time there are changes to the information that’s relevant to you.

Start by simply doing a search. Whether you’ve searched for a region, company, or person, you can click “Add to collection” to save that search. This search will be saved into your “My Collections” tab, and you’ll get a notification whenever there’s a change to that data.

For example, if a new company enters a regional market, if a startup raises funding, or if a key person changes roles—you’ll be the first to know.

You can customise it by setting the kind of information you want and how often you prefer to receive notifications. This way, it’s easy to stay informed about any changes to your industry or local business ecosystem.

The Dorset Local Enterprise Partnership is an example of how local governments use Collections. The Dorset LEP uses BeauhurstImpact to track local high-growth businesses, in order to create weekly reports and perform outreach campaigns.

“We report to the government on a weekly basis,” says Finn Morgan, Business Engagement and Dorset Gateway Manager. “I construct these reports using Beauhurst’s Collections feature—I have weekly alerts set up for local businesses, which notify me of any updates, such as a change in headcount or registered address, or a new foreign investment.”

“When we’re doing cold outreach to businesses […] we can say something like ‘I see you’ve got a new CFO’ or ‘congratulations on securing that Innovate UK grant’, and this really opens up the conversation for us—it shows that we’ve done our due diligence and know what we’re talking about.”

4. An API that feeds high-quality data into your own system

With the Beauhurst API, you can plug all of our high-quality data into your internal systems, and leverage it however you want. For example, you can use our data to enrich your own as a way of boosting your reporting capabilities or improving your analytics.

What’s more, you don’t need to choose between using our API or our platform. Instead, you can use both—to let employees access our data, while powering your system with our API. For instance, the investment company, AlbionVC, has recently started using Beauhurst’s API to access accurate data directly through their systems.

“The API has given us a much more efficient way to consume the great data that comes out of the Beauhurst platform,” Investment Director, Cat McDonald, explained. “It’s played a key part in helping us to augment our CRM and have a single source of truth, discovering companies and fundraisers that would have otherwise gone under our radar.”

5. A personalised (human) service, tailored to your needs

Many company data providers simply send you a file or set you up with database logins. After that, you’re left to fend for yourself. But when you work with Beauhurst, you get a dedicated account manager who will help you get the very best out of the available data.

Our team will also help you with onboarding and give you training sessions, as well as giving you ongoing support whenever your team needs it.

And there’s more:

Our research and consultancy teams can support your organisation with bespoke research on any aspect of the economy. For example, we’ve produced thought leadership reports on high-growth businesses in Nottinghamshire and women angel investors. Plus, we offer consultancy on business trends and how to better use data in your organisation.

Choose Beauhurst for the richest data available on UK businesses

Beauhurst provides the most comprehensive data available on private companies in the UK. It’s verified, enriched, and structured, so it’s easy to search and compare—no matter what you’re using it for. Whether you’re a university looking for business partnerships or an investor seeking new opportunities, you can use Beauhurst’s database to:

“With Beauhurst, we have access to real-time information, with a level of detail that we wouldn’t get anywhere else. And it’s very, very easy to use”, says Amin Vepari, Business Finance and Scaleup Lead at the Lancashire County Council.

Book a demo with us to see how Beauhurst can work for you.

Grow your business.

Get access to unrivalled data on all the companies you need to know about, so you can approach the right leads, at the right time.

Book a demo today to see all of the key features of our platforms, as well as the depth and breadth of data available.

An associate will work with you to build a sophisticated search, returning a dynamic list of organisations that match your ideal customer profile.

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