At some point, you may well be faced with the challenge of expanding your business. You may be planning on entering a new market altogether, or perhaps you just want to diversify your already existing client base. Whatever your motivation, one of the first steps is knowing where to go to search for company information online, and what you can expect to find when you’re there. As you may require quite varying levels of detail depending on what stage of your investigation you are at, it is a good idea to be aware of places where you can search online in order to obtain sufficiently detailed, reliable information about a company before you make any major decisions that could affect your business.
Limited Companies
Begin with some investigations via the Internet. You can perform company search using services such as offered by Duedil. Using search for company search at Duedil, you can obtain the most basic information on any limited company is as simple as entering the name (or company number if known), and then selecting the result from the database which you are presented with. Many businesses will already have some degree of familiarity with the Duedil website and the type of information it can provide from Companies House data to credit checks. Details available without charge include the full name and registered office, date of incorporation, any previous names the company may have gone under, and the company type.
There are a number of other sites that provide similar information to that offered by Duedil, although differentiating between them can often be a matter of taste due to the overlap in information they are obligated to provide if they are to remain useful to their users. Differences mainly boil down to methods of presentation and ease of use rather than significant differences in pricing. Where possible, it is prudent to establish whether or not the basic information offered by a site is in accordance with others before embarking on more detailed research as differences within data at this stage can indicate that the information being used is out of date or unreliable.
Non-limited companies
Some sites offer information on both limited and non-limited companies and for the latter, the type of information on offer is comparable to that offered through Companies House.
Further research
Most searches for company information will eventually require a more in-depth analysis to be made of the financial health of the business being considered. Most sites offering the ability to search online for credit reports highlight the fact that business credit checking is an essential part of ascertaining the viability of a company and its general trustworthiness as a potential client. Criteria such as FICO scores and credit rating numbers all contribute to the decision making process and are necessary elements to formulating the most suitable method for approaching each individual client. It is worth bearing in mind that not all the information on offer might be required at the initial stages of your search and that you will be better served by a more selective approach to obtaining more detailed information once you have decided on a set number of clients to do business with.
If a more detailed search is called for, sites like Duedil offer in-depth financial information about companies including profit and loss, meaning you can research the state of a company’s finances before actually entering into business with them. The site is constantly expanding to provide more intricate details, for example they recently launched an accounts estimator and accounting ratios calculator, allowing more insight into small and medium sized companies who often submit less data to Companies House.
Conclusion
Overall it is important to do your homework, you do not want to enter into business with a company likely to go into liquidation. Expanding your business is an exciting time and it means you have already achieved success.