How Do R&D Tax Agencies Use Beauhurst?
Sarah Cheeseman, 29 June 2023
It’s safe to say that Research & Development (R&D) tax agencies have been through a fair bit of change over the past few years. When HMRC announced significant reforms in the incentive scheme in July 2022, many tax relief firms found an increase in compliance checks coming through for former claims, and saw that the guidelines they previously adhered to were no longer as open to interpretation as they may have been.
The R&D tax relief industry is a very well saturated industry, with everything from large scale organisations to ‘one-man-band’ functions offering similar services to their clients. This means that business development can be a tricky task, and many agencies are seeking new ways to find new clients—especially those within the innovation sectors. And while there’s a vast amount of data held on emerging companies in the UK, traditionally it’s been almost impossible to view it in one centralised location. Until now.
Introducing BeauhurstSales
The BeauhurstSales platform brings together data from the whole UK private company market—that’s 5m+ companies—in a searchable format. Our platform enables users to undertake incredibly specific searches to pull highly-targeted prospect lists. And thanks to our 60+ data analysts and developers, the data that’s gathered from hundreds of different sources—from HMRC to the European Patent Office, media to independent sources—that data on BeauhurstSales is always current and accurate.
Why do R&D tax agencies use BeauhurstSales?
There are hundreds of R&D tax agencies in the UK, all largely targeting the same group of people. And while there are also plenty of companies carrying out R&D, finding the ones that qualify to claim back relief and aren’t already claiming through another provider or their own accountant can be a tough job. This is why our clients come to us—our platform helps them to dig deep into the data and find the hidden gems. Here are just some of the benefits of using our BeauhurstSales platform:
1. Target innovative companies
If you’re in the R&D tax industry, you know that the sweet spot for clients is those that are innovative in their sector. Technology and software are huge, of course, but it’s also about finding the companies hidden within other sectors, such as agriculture, that can have the biggest impacts on your business. Our platform has been designed to enable you to be really specific with your searches—such as industry, location, organisation-size or activity, to name a few—narrowing down your searches to reveal targeted lead lists.
Our platform was built with this in mind, bringing together accurate and up-to-date information into one, searchable platform, meaning your business development teams can get their hands on the right data at the right time. So you can easily create lead lists of potential customers that are ready to buy.
2. Find warm leads
You may have found that your R&D tax agency has wasted time and money purchasing data for email campaigns that fell on deaf ears—you won’t be alone.
Unfortunately, many innovative companies will tell you that they’re inundated with messages from R&D firms on a weekly basis, all offering the same services. So, how can you stand out? With the BeauhurstSales platform, you have access to market intelligence that enables your team to produce targeted, intelligent approaches that are timed at the right time. And thanks to our networks feature, you can leverage your existing contacts to make warm approaches.
3. Be more intelligent with your data
The majority of R&D consultancies are looking for the same thing when it comes to new clients—those that are carrying out R&D, with a certain number of staff and a certain level of profit. But what if you could go further than this? Our software allows you to search on a huge number of different filters, including announced and unannounced funding, previous grants, industry buzzwords and patent information, giving you the upper hand when it comes to finding the clients with the most potential.
4. Build trust with prospective clients
Once you’ve found your ideal clients, the last thing you want to do is lose them with vague and untargeted messages. The data that we provide enables you to build truly personalised campaigns, making use of reams of industry data to show how much you understand their position and experiences. This helps you to build a much higher level of trust with your audience and get better results from your marketing and sales efforts.
What can I use BeauhurstSales data for?
There are plenty of ways that our data can be used to help clients in the R&D tax relief sector, including:
Finding ‘similar companies’
Our data uses a mix of machine learning and semantic search to analyse every company description in the database, creating links to those which are within similar categories (even if they don’t use the same words or phrases). This means that our clients are able to do searches based on their own area of expertise, or previous clients, and create personalised lists of potential prospects. This can be particularly useful if you want to delve deeper into a particular niche, or use case studies of previous client claims to win new business. You can also search on company or industry descriptions and buzzwords to find your ‘sweet spot’ of clients.
Unannounced funding
If a company has raised funding, there’s a good chance that they’ll be using a chunk of it for R&D. But with millions of pounds being raised each year in secret, most R&D firms aren’t able to find out which companies fall into these categories. Beauhurst’s platform is unique in that we’re able to provide this data to our users, giving them a leg up in the search for the most exciting and innovative companies in the market.
Targeted triggers
Our comprehensive collection of UK company data allows you to segment your lists based on a number of specific triggers, including patent data, spinout corporations and previous grant recipients. Our aim is to highlight the most innovative companies out there, even when they’re only just starting out. Many of our R&D clients use this data, particularly information about accelerator and incubator alumni, to get their foot in the door early on and become their trusted R&D tax relief partner.
Working with Beauhurst
As you can tell, we adore data and what it enables our clients to do. And while we pride ourselves on the quality and quantity of our data, we don’t just leave it at that. Each of our clients has a dedicated Account Managers and Client Experience Manager to provide training and troubleshooting, every step of the way. Our goal is to help you get the most out of the platform to see value and achieve your business goals. To find out more, book a demo or speak to a member of our team today.
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