Digitised companies
Why filter companies by their level of digitisation
This filter may not be as common in company databases, but we believe it absolutely deserves to be here.
It’s been years since Marc Andreessen wrote Software is eating the world and since then, technology in general — and software in particular — has taken over the day‑to‑day reality of businesses.
All of them?
Not quite.
Like a village of indomitable Gauls that still resists the invader, there is still a meaningful share of companies in Spain that, for lack of need, knowledge, time or simply motivation, are not digitised.
And that (lack of) digitisation makes them unique and fundamentally different from other companies in their sector that are somewhat digitised — which in turn are very different from those that are at the cutting edge of digitisation in the same sector.
Digitisation level influences headcount, decision‑making, internal organisation, process management, and a long list of other factors — enough to justify its own dedicated segment.
At the end of the day, there’s a very good chance that your customers’ level of digitisation will shape your sales — for better or worse.
When to filter companies by their level of digitisation
Like everything in life, some use cases are obvious and others are harder to spot — and it all depends on the nature of what you sell.
Since it’s impossible to cover every product and service on the planet, here are a couple of examples (of each) to help you connect the dots for your own case.
The most straightforward use case for the Digitisation level segment is for companies selling software. If I sell a payment gateway, a website builder, an email platform, etc., I’ll want to know which companies do not yet have a similar technology — or which ones do, but are using a competitor with worse pricing or a weaker product — so I can reach out and make the case for switching.
Another obvious example is a company offering digital transformation consulting. They will want to find companies that, based on their digitisation level, are perfectly positioned to benefit from such services.
But what if I don’t sell software?
What if I don’t teach people how to use software?
What if I sell nothing related to that “damn software”?
Is this irrelevant for me?
Maybe not.
Here are a few more examples, less “digital” this time.
Imagine you’re a logistics company. Knowing which companies use e‑commerce tools on their websites tells you who sells physical products online — and may need your services.
Or if a company has neither a website nor a corporate email address, it will probably be far easier to sell them a printer or a landline than it would be for more digitised companies.
If they do have a website, but it lacks legal terms, a privacy policy or a cookie notice, that’s often a strong fit for a legal firm.
You see the pattern, right?
At Atogu, what we’re trying to do is give you the tools to let your creativity run free when profiling customers — whether you sell tech products or not.
Where the data comes from
To build a company’s digital footprint we review, of course, its website (or the absence of one) and its social media profiles.
But we also look at the job ads they publish, the news they appear in, and the discussions they trigger on online review sites.
Available filters
To help you profile companies by digitisation level, we provide the following filters:
Companies by digitisation level
When determining a company’s digital footprint, the first thing to check is whether it has a website.
But we don’t stop there.
Not at all.
We also look at whether they have a blog, whether they publish job ads, whether they belong to sector associations, whether they share product documentation online, and a long list of other signals.
Companies by social media presence
When it comes to being discoverable online, social media sits at the heart of almost any company’s digital strategy. Given its importance (and diversity), we created a dedicated filter for it.
And when we say social media, we don’t limit ourselves to the usual suspects everyone knows: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, LinkedIn, etc.
No.
We also include platforms that, while not “social networks” per se, have a strong social discovery/sharing component — such as YouTube, Medium, GitHub and many more.
Companies by technology stack
So far, the filters we’ve discussed focus on online presence. But they don’t tell you anything about the intensity of a company’s digitisation — and that is exactly what this filter is designed to capture.
Atogu gives you a list of the internal technologies a company uses: their email provider, CRM, payment gateway, website builder, marketing tools, etc., etc., etc.
Everything you can think of — and more.
We continuously monitor hundreds of technologies not only to tell you what they use (and stop using), but also to alert you when they are considering adopting a new technology or when their current contract is about to expire — so you can contact potential customers at the exact moment they are making a buying decision.
This section is so substantial that we’ve built an entire segment around it with dozens of different filters. You can learn more here:
Companies by SEO positioning
As we mention in the relevant article, segmenting Companies by Industry has a problem: very often the official data in the Commercial Register does not reliably reflect the industry a company actually operates in.
This can happen for several reasons. Either the founders stopped the activity the company originally carried out when it was incorporated, pivoted into another industry and forgot to complete the paperwork to formalise the change; or founders simply chose an industry that gives them better tax advantages than the one they truly belong to.
In any case, there is one thing that is indicative of the company’s current sector: the keywords it ranks for on its website.
And in the SEO positioning filter, we don’t only focus on keywords — we also provide information about the amount of organic traffic the website receives, which geographies drive the most visits, and much more.
One important nuance
All the filters described in this section depend on the same thing: the company wants to be discoverable online.
But that’s not always the case.
There are cases — rare, but they exist — where a company, by mistake or by choice, blocks search engine bots from accessing its website. That means that no matter how hard you search, its website is hidden and won’t appear on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo or any other search engine.
That’s why it’s important you understand that when Atogu shows that a company has no website, in the vast majority of cases that will be true. But there is a chance it’s a false negative: the company does have a website, but it is hidden from third parties.
These are exceptional cases, but we wanted you to know they exist and to take them into account.