Computer and IT data guide
The fastest-forming sector on the register, and the one where the register tells you least about size. Both of those are useful if you know which way round they run.
More companies incorporate under computer programming and IT than under almost anything else, and the overwhelming majority of them are one or two people. That combination makes the register very good at one thing and actively misleading at another.
What the register holds
The standard record: name, number, status, incorporation date, registered office and postcode, officers, people with significant control, filing history.
Two SIC divisions cover it:
- 62 computer programming and consultancy, split into 62012 software development, 62020 IT consultancy and 62090 other IT services
- 63 information service activities, including 63110 data processing and hosting and 63120 web portals
The line between 62012 and 62020 is close to meaningless in practice. People pick one at incorporation and never revisit it. Treat 62 as one thing unless you have a specific reason not to.
Good at timing, bad at size
Timing. A software company that incorporated last month is on the register this month, and it has bought nothing yet. No accounting software, no payroll, no tooling, no insurance. If your product is sold to new companies, formation data is the earliest public signal that a buyer exists, and it beats every other channel by months.
Size. The register will not tell you whether a company is one contractor or a sixty-person agency. Small company accounts hide turnover and headcount. Officer count is a weak proxy at best, because plenty of substantial businesses have two directors and plenty of dormant shells have four.
If you need to qualify by size, you need another source. If you need to find companies early, this is the source.
The other use: the graph itself
This is the one sector that buys the register as raw material rather than as a prospect list.
A clean, typed, connected set of UK companies with codes, dates, officers and addresses is useful for entity resolution, for CRM enrichment, and for grounding a model on real records rather than scraped pages. The value is that it is complete and consistent, not that any single row is interesting.
What the register does not hold
- Turnover, headcount, funding or valuation
- Tech stack, clients, or what the company actually builds
- Contact details of any kind
- A real trading address. Registered offices in this sector are overwhelmingly accountants and formation agents
What people in the sector actually do with it
- Reach companies in their first year, before supplier decisions are locked in
- Enrich an existing CRM by matching to company number and filling the gaps
- Ground a model or a product on a real company graph
- Map where development actually concentrates by postcode
- Track dissolutions and consolidation across the sector
Where to start
The computer and IT sector view covers divisions 62 and 63 code by code, with formations and dissolutions.
If you need a specific cut, tell us what it is.
See the data for it & technology
The register broken down by sector, and the datasets that apply to it.