Blog Post from Simon White – Senior Accounts Manager

I have always been interested in how things can be grouped together to extract meaning from a chaotic jumble.

The first system of classifications that really blew my mind was the biological taxonomy used for classifying living organisms that I discovered in high school.

Seven levels – from kingdom (animals, plants etc,) on down to phylum, class, order, family, genus and species.

By knowing the species name for a dog (Canis familiaris) – like Chase from our office – you could see how similar he is to a wolf (Canis lupus), and how different from another carnivore such as the Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisii). More than a million species have been classified in the world, and scientists estimate there could be at least six million yet to be classified.

While not as complex, the challenge of classifying the 2.3 million actively trading businesses in Australia is still quite daunting. Classifications are essential for governments to measure the economic activity in the various sectors and create policies that will stimulate targeted industries and/or regions.

The 2006 Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC 2006) framework is the most widely used system in Australia to group businesses that carry out similar activities. There are 19 Divisions (such as Construction or Manufacturing) and three lower levels of subdivisions, groups, and classes for business activities.

There are 506 classes and each has a four digit code and a short description. For example a plumber is “3231 – Plumbing Services”.

List Factory settled on the ANZSIC 2006 system as a standard as well for its Core B2B Database, and we have over 1 million small and medium sized businesses classified (with increases every build).

Clients use ANZSIC classifications in various ways – from excluding certain industry types to selecting specific classes that will be more receptive to their offer.

I love a good classification system to analyse trends. If you are interested, List Factory can help you understand your existing customers more from an industry and business activity perspective to help your customer marketing and prospecting activities.

Contact us to find out how Core B2B and ANZSIC’s can be of use for your business.