Building a roadmap of opportunities with the NZBN

STATS NZ

Stats NZ began integrating the New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) into its systems last year and has already started seeing results across the organisation. Watch this video in full to learn more about Stats NZ’s NZBN journey.

Read the transcript

Video transcript

Visual

The screen is blue and writing appears across the screen reading ‘How Stats NZ is using the NZBN to build a roadmap of opportunities’. The NZBN and Stats NZ logos appears in the corner of the screen. The screen then cuts to a man is sitting in an office talking and his name appears across the screen – Kelvin Watson, Stats NZ, Deputy Government Statistician and Deputy Chief Executive, Data Services.

Audio

Kelvin: Stats NZ’s vision is unleashing the power of data to change lives and part of how we do that is through linking data sets and the more data you can link together the more information you are likely to get out of that and the NZBN is actually providing quite a key linking variable for us to link those data-sets.

Visual

A message appears on the screen as Kelvin talks saying ‘The NZBN provides key linking variable’.
The screen pans down a Stats NZ sign that reads ‘Unleashing the power of data to change lives’.

Visual

A woman is shown sitting in an office and talking and her names appears across the screen – Sarah Minson, Stats NZ General Manager – Customer Support and Development.

Audio

Sarah: When we first started to look at NZBN I think there was a range of opinions across the organisation. We are a data agency so the NZBN is a perfect opportunity for us to link information across business.

Visual

A message appears on the screen while Sarah is talking reading ‘The NZBN is a perfect opportunity for us to link information across the business’.

Audio

Sarah: So a lot of us saw huge opportunity but some of the areas that we were less familiar with was how might we use it in procurement and how we might we use this in areas like finance so that was more of a challenge for us to think through the opportunities. To do that we've got the NZBN team in to help us. So what we've got is a whole lot of things that we want to do with the NZBN and we've put that together in a roadmap for ourselves and it is both short term opportunities and some longer-term opportunities things that are quite quick and easy to implement and things that will take a little bit longer.

Visual

A message appears across the screen while Sarah is talking reading ‘Put together a roadmap identify short and long-term opportunities’.

Audio

Sarah: So we had a register of almost all businesses in New Zealand and by having the NZBN on our register it allows us to link information across government more seamlessly. The NZBN is going to make life easier for Stats NZ because it's going to provide us some efficiency gains. It's also going to enable us to provide new services to business. The NZBN will help eliminate manual processes. If businesses can update their core business information on the NZBN register and Stats NZ can consume that information automatically into our systems.

Visual

A message appears across the screen while Sarah is talking reading ‘The NZBN will help eliminate manual processes’.

Audio

Sarah: NZBN is more than just a number, it’s the opportunity for us to transform the way we interact with business. The advice we would give to other agencies in terms of implementing the NZBN would be to talk to the NZBN team. They have a lot of experience about the benefits of NZBN and how other agencies have implemented it.

Visual

A message appears across the screen while Sarah is talking reading “The NZBN is more than just a number – it’s an opportunity to transform the way we interact with other businesses”.

Visual

Kelvin appears on the screen again talking to the camera in the Stats NZ office.

Audio

Kelvin: The NZBN will definitely make it easier. Previously we've used other numbers (IRD numbers, that sort of thing) but NZBN for the first time provides a single unique identifier for each business

Visual

A message appears on the screen while Kelvin is talking reading “The NZBN will definitely makes things easier”. The screen fades out to a black screen reading “Find out how the NZBN can become an asset for your business at nzbn.govt.nz. The NZBN logo, the Better for Business logo and the NewZealand.govt.nz logo are also displayed on the screen.

Sarah Minson, Stats NZ General Manager – Customer Support & Development, explains “The NZBN is more than just a number. It’s the opportunity for us to transform the way we interact with businesses.”

The NZBN is a unique identifier available to all businesses in New Zealand, which links to core information about that business - such as trading name, email address and phone number.

With many other competing priorities, taking a ‘big bang’ approach to implementing the NZBN wasn’t on the cards. Instead, Stats NZ have built an integration roadmap over the short, medium and long-term by identifying opportunities to streamline or innovate using the NZBN.

Sarah mentions that when Stats NZ first started to look at the NZBN there were a range of opinions across the organisation.

“We’re a data agency so of course the NZBN is a perfect opportunity for us to link information across the business, so a lot of us saw huge opportunity,”

“But some of the areas we were less familiar with was how might we use this in procurement and how might we use [the NZBN] in areas like finance,” says Sarah.

Stats NZ ran workshops, working directly with the NZBN team, who helped the organisation identify opportunities, both now and in the future.

Stats NZ is excited about the long-term possibilities, Sarah explains “Linking data using the NZBN is going to make life easier for Stats NZ and provide us with some efficiency gains. It’s also going to enable us to provide new products and services to businesses.”

Get up-to-date information about the businesses you work with. Connect now at nzbn.govt.nz.

Published: 31 January 2018