Legal entities - branches show the same contacts

When exporting company and contact data from Bizzy, you may notice that some contacts appear more than once. This is not a bug, but the result of how Bizzy structures its data model. We organize all companies based on legal entities, which means that each VAT or registration number is treated as a separate company.

What are legal entities?

At Bizzy, we start from the official business registers of each country to map all companies.

• In Belgium, this is the Belgian Business Register (KBO).

• In France, this comes from the official trade registries.

• In the Netherlands, from the Kamer van Koophandel (KVK).

Each VAT or registration number represents a separate legal entity, and in our data model, every legal entity is treated as a distinct company.

We then enrich these legal entities with information from other public sources such as company websites, job boards, and social networks. This ensures a complete and up-to-date picture of each entity.

Why multiple entities for the same brand or company?

Because the model is based on registration numbers, a company with multiple branches or subsidiaries will appear several times in Bizzy.

Example:
Standaard Boekhandel has dozens of branches in Belgium, each with its own VAT number. In Bizzy, every branch is included as a separate legal entity, even though they belong to the same corporate group.

Consequence for contacts

When contacts are linked to legal entities, the same person may appear multiple times in an export. This happens because each branch is stored as a separate entity and gets associated with its relevant contacts.

This is not an error, but a direct result of our data model, which treats legal entities individually.

What does this mean for you?

• In exports, the same contact can appear several times, each time connected to the legal entity they belong to.

• For analysis or prospecting, it is important to remember that a large brand like Standaard Boekhandel is represented in Bizzy by multiple legal entities.

• This setup also offers advantages: you can target specific branches or regions within a larger group more precisely.