Global Professional Services: Business Development

At Company Watch, we take pride in helping companies of all shapes and sizes. Our clients range from small, independent businesses to global financial giants. Among this second group, we’re proud to include one of the world’s largest providers of professional services. 

We began working with this client over 20 years ago, focusing on the area of business development. This partnership means a lot to us, and we’re proud of what we’ve achieved together. Here’s a look at our work, and how we can do the same for you. 

Client

Global professional services

Our client is one of the largest professional services networks in the world, operating globally and employing hundreds of thousands of people. It provides a wide range of financial services, offering help and advice on everything from audits and forensic accounting to restructuring and insolvency.

Over the years, the company has gained a stellar reputation, both as a business and as an employer. It has been named one of the ten most powerful companies in the world and frequently appears near the top of the Forbes list of America’s largest private companies.

The company has also been widely praised for its commitment to ethical business practices and employee welfare.

Challenge

Streamlining business development

A big part of our client’s work is helping companies reduce their exposure to financial risk. This has been more important than ever in recent years. Supply chain disruption and persistent inflation have created a deeply unstable environment, leaving many businesses in a vulnerable position.

For our client, this presented an opportunity. If the business development team could make contact with these companies, they could offer them assistance. The only problem was finding the companies that fit the right target profile. There is a wealth of data available on UK businesses, but the sheer quantity of information was making it difficult and time-consuming to pick out promising leads. 

Companies House keeps records on over four million limited companies, and resources such as The Gazette provide even more detail. These records contained everything our client needed to identify high-risk businesses. The challenge was spotting these useful needles in a haystack of unstructured data.

To make matters worse, Companies House saves its records as PDFs, making them unsearchable by computer. The only way to find what you need is to trawl through these records manually. 

Solution 

SearCHeD

Businesses have struggled with the Companies House database for years, and we felt they deserved better. That’s why we created SearCHeD - our very own Companies House search engine. 

We’ve turned hundreds of thousands of PDFs into searchable documents, letting you find what you need in a matter of seconds. You can search for specific companies by name, or search the whole database for keywords indicative of risk. You can also narrow searches by industry, or search for risks within your existing portfolio.

SearCHeD explainer video ⬇️

This created a wealth of possibilities for our client. The firm’s business development team could search the Companies House database for certain risks, immediately identifying businesses with potential exposure. If they wanted to focus on larger businesses, they could narrow the search to companies above a certain turnover threshold. If they wanted leads in a particular industry or region, they could specify this in the search parameters. 

This is how technology should work. We weren’t trying to automate the human side of business development. We were just speeding up the process of getting there. After a short session with SearCHeD, our client could narrow down hundreds of thousands of annual accounts documents to a few dozen. Using this as a starting point, the data could then be enriched using other Company Watch tools. 

Now, the real work begins. The leads were divided regionally so that our client could provide targeted, personalised support. This is where the client saw the true value of our service, and why we hope they will continue to work with us in future.

Something for everyone

We often focus on Company Watch as a tool for credit risk management, but this is not the only benefit we offer. If you work in business development, our platform can be an effective way to generate leads. Rather than spotting risks in your portfolio, you can look for companies that could be lucrative partners, customers or acquisitions. 

This can help every business, from global brands to small start-ups. Whether you’re concerned about supply chain risk, procurement risk, or any other form of financial risk management, SearCHeD makes it easy to perform due diligence.

To arrange a free trial, or for details on our other services, don’t hesitate to get in touch.