Top 5 cities with the most registered company addresses:

1. London (897719)

2. Birmingham (86533)

3. Manchester (81940)

4. Glasgow (58622)

5. Bristol (53830) 

(Based on registrations of companies in Companies House)

Operating under the radar 

According to companies house the cities in the list above have the most registered companies. Which is a great bit of data; on the face of it. However we have found that companies house records can often be unrepresentative of where a company actually operates. 

For example, many companies will only have one address registered with companies house, but will operate in many regions, often including a number of separate locations for head office, manufacturing, consumer stores etc. This address may also belong to a holding company, accountants or solicitors who handle that organisations company filings.

What does this mean? 

This means there is no easy way to obtain a representative list of all operating companies in any one region by relying solely on data that originates from Companies House. 

It also means that a company that looks like it is operating in a region, may not actually be benefiting the economy there.

Example- Smiths (a large manufacturing company) is shown as residing in region A, however only a small head office resides there. Smiths manufacturing plants are actually in regions B & C and therefore the economic and employment statistics for all 3 regions will be affected. 

Databases and Lists

Thus, taking into consideration the above, we must consider the reliability of pre-prepared lists and databases, which for the most part are created wholly from companies house data and SIC codes. 

As well as being unrepresentative of the geographical location the operations of a company they are often out of date too. Which means they contain companies who have dissolved or are no longer trading and they do not contain newly incorporated companies. 

How can this issue be resolved?

To ensure that sales and marketing effort isn't being wasted, I believe that the only effective targeting system MUST work in real-time.

IQBlade aggregates data from a number of sources to ensure its validity. It provides 100's of data points on each company, including: company overview, financials, competencies, social media etc. It also provides the ability to compare and benchmark companies against one and other and against yourself. Along with a number of analytical tools, IQBlade provides the most complete and accurate experience when dealing with market knowledge.