Single Business Numbers – Good for CRM, Good for Business

John Eccles, 31 August 2012

The Action Plan for Better public services for business, published by the NZ Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment yesterday (30 August, 2012) indicates that a Single Business Number is on the way.

Under the heading Action: Collect information and share it so businesses only have to tell government once, is this clause: “Subject to a positive business case, give each business its own unique ‘identifier’ so they only need to remember one number when dealing with government agencies.”

It seems that a single business number is one of the building-blocks to more efficient interaction with government agencies.

In Australia, the Australian Business Number (ABN) is a unique number that is required for GST registration and is printed on invoices – much like the GST Number in NZ.  In Canada, the Business Number is assigned to a business when they register for GST or file corporate income tax. In Canada, the GST number became the Business Number when the Business Number came into effect. This might happen in NZ.

A better option would be the adoption of Global Location Numbers (GLN) as promoted by Xero CEO Rod Drury and GS1 CEO Peter Stephens.

Good for CRM

CRM systems are all about capturing information about customers – including organisations and contacts.  A unique identifier that is regulated, with related information updated and stored and accessible via the internet, provides a means of data capture and cleansing. 

Already tools are available to pull data from the internet into a CRM system.  A great example is Broadlook.  With the Broadlook CRM Profiler add-on for CRM, you can automatically pull contact details for an organisation as long as you have a website url.

A similar tool would be able to pull useful information about businesses from the web into CRM via the Single Business Number.  When information changed, the address for example, CRM could be automatically updated.

Good for Business

As Rod Drury and Peter Stevens point out, “A unique business identifier is also a key building block for enabling electronic transactions between businesses, and between business and the government. Electronic transactions are a clear way for NZ business to generate a step change in efficiency.”  Conceivably a quote, order or invoice generated in your CRM or ERP system could automatically be transferred to the appropriate system of the customer or supplier and confirmation of receipt received. 

But don’t hold your breath

The government’s time line for action is 18-36 months.