Business Types - Explained
There are several business types or business sector lists that define business activity carried out at a premise or as a business (across the group). The most “thumbed” business sectors lists are of course Yellow Pages, Business Pages and Thomson Local. The Government uses it's own system to define business types - Standard Industrial Classification Codes (SICs). A full list of these business sectors lists - classifications can be downloaded from our download section, specifically an SIC translation table between SIC 1980 and the latest SIC codes.
Using any of these business types / business sector lists will be subject to Copyright Law and the type of system you use will very much depend on what you want to achieve or do with the list. To elaborate, there are 380 different SIC codes in the UK 1980 SIC code system, over 500 in the European NACE SIC code system and over 2,700 different business activities in the Yellow Pages / Thomson sector lists, ranging from Abattoirs to Zoos. So how defined does your classification system need to be?
Standard Industrial Classifications (SIC Codes) Explained
SIC 1980 (UK Specific)
There are essentially three official classification systems of SIC that can be applied to describe UK business types. SIC UK (80), SIC (92 or a later date) and the SIC NACE.
SIC was first introduced into the United Kingdom in 1948 for use in classifying business establishments and other statistical units by the type of economic activity in which they are engaged. The classification provides a framework for the collection, tabulation, presentation and analysis of business types. It can be used for administrative purposes and by non-government bodies as a convenient way of classifying industrial activities into a common structure. This UK specific SIC code is still in operation and is often referred to as SIC 80 which was the last time it was specific to the UK business practices. The SIC 80 is still in use today although more and more people now adopt the European system which you see referred to as SIC 92 (or a later date) or SIC (NACE). There are approximately 380 classifications in the SIC 80 system.
SIC 92 and later (UK (92) & Europe (NACE) Specific)
In 1992 a new SIC classification was introduced to the UK so that we compare to European businesses in terms of analysis & reports. Despite this new code, you will find many organisations have stayed with the 1980 system or have adopted both systems of business classification. The new SIC 92 system has more classification codes and therefore the UK business population can be dissected and analysed to a better degree (there are over 500 business classifications in this newer classification system).
SIC92 is based exactly on NACE (Rev 1) but where it was thought necessary or helpful a fifth digit has been added to form subclasses of the NACE Rev I four digit classes. Thus SIC 92 is a hierarchical five digit system. However, at the first or highest level of aggregation, unlike the SIC 80 which had ten divisions, SIC92 is divided into 17 sections, each denoted by a single letter from A to Q. Some sections are, in turn, divided into subsections (each denoted by the addition of a second letter). The letters of the sections or subsections do not need to be part of the SIC/NACE codes since they can be uniquely defined by the next breakdown, the divisions (denoted by two digits). The divisions are then broken down into groups (3 digits), then into classes (4 digits) and, in several cases, again into subclasses (5 digits).
To simplify our counting engine for the user, we work with just the four digit business sector lists. Our codes do not offer Sections or Subsection Alpha Digits.
What System to Use?
If looking to purchase a list, we would recommend the Thomson or Yellow Pages lists as there are thousands of business sector lists that define the business activity carried out at the site. You can be very specific in the list you want whereas SICs tend to be very general and you will get hundreds of business types defined by just one SIC code.
If you want to use a classification system in your database to define your customers then SIC is the way to go as the Thomson and Yellow Pages business sectors lists are copyright protected so you can't use them! Our Recommendation would be to use the latest NACE system to classify businesses in your database as this is fairly robust and can transfer to any future business list that you buy in or add to your database. What's more the business sectors lists in the SIC code system map directly to industry that exists today. The UK 1980 system excludes internet types of businesses and hundreds more - industry moves on but this old system remains fixed in time. The USA SIC system should be avoided at all costs in our opinion. The USA business sector lists will not map to UK business activities as it has hundreds of non relevant business sectors including space related headings like astronauts, specialised farming headings etc. These do not relate to UK or European business activities and are often not supported by the marketing industry in the UK. So if you want to buy a list using USA SIC codes then your going to find it hard going.
A further point of interest is that none of the SIC code systems map to each other although a few attempts have been made by various companies.
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