Information professionals and librarians involved in finding information on businesses on a regular basis probably use a variety of services but if this is something you do not normally do then finding business information might seem like a daunting and difficult task. This post will provide you with some key useful information to make it a lot easier.

One of the first problems you might encounter even before you look for company information is identifying the name of the company. This you would imagine would be a simple task but you might get asked to find company information on a single word company name that when when searched for brings up a large list of companies all containing that word/name but with different prefixes and suffixes.

So how exactly do you discover what the actually company name is?

You can try to see if the person asking you for the company information knows the actual full name of the company or if they have a web address for the company or even a letter or email.

If they do not have any further information you can always search for their company website and this might not be so difficult because you will most probably know roughly what the business does (as it will probably be related to something specific your company is doing). If you locatea web site for the company look at the bottom of the site to see if it provides a full name for the company or go to a contact page and see if the full company name is listed there it normally is).

If you have further problems your search should have provided you with an address and you can use that address to help you find the company name when you are actually trying to search for their business information.

Word of warning
Make sure you find the correct business name and if you have any doubts whatsoever always express these doubts to the person you are providing the information to so they know that it might not be correct.

So you have the correct company name or at least you think, so you do what do you do now?

You now need to start using business information services. I commonly look for business information in my role I have so far found the following services extremely useful:

Companies House

Companies House is probably the most well known place to locate information on businesses and information on companies can be found on their Find Company Information web page. On this page you will be presented with the ability to search via the company name or by the company number.

Company Check

Company Check is very easy to use and because of this its one of the first places I choose to look for my initial business information. The service offers lots of information on companies for free and there is also the option to upgrade to their Pro account if you wanted to. All the information on their site is displayed in a nice clean layout and its easy to move between screens using their clearly labelled tabs to find the information you want.

DueDil

Duedil is an information aggregator service that offers business information from Companies House but I find it easier to use. You can register for a free account then pay for the content you want to download. The site is very easy to use and that’s the main reason I often choose to use Duedil over other services.

Information Videos on Duedil:

DueDil Trust Video

This is DueDil

DueDil Search Overview