NACE

NACE (Nomenclature statistique des activités économiques dans la Communauté européenne) is the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Union. Every company registered in the EU is assigned a NACE code that identifies its primary economic activity, organized in a hierarchy from broad sections down to detailed four-digit classes.

National statistical systems build on NACE: in Germany, the WZ 2008 classification extends NACE with a fifth digit, and NACE maps approximately to the US SIC and NAICS systems. This makes NACE codes the common language for industry classification across European registers, statistics, and databases.

In B2B sales and market analysis, NACE codes make industry targeting precise and comparable. Instead of relying on free-text industry labels, teams can define their target market as a set of NACE classes, size the market consistently, and filter or enrich company lists by code. Compelling supports industry filtering with classification codes such as NACE, WZ, and SIC, so target lists can be built on the same definitions used in official registers.