Most small to medium companies (SME’s) that have successfully weathered the worst of the recession are actively planning to expand - because in most mainstream industry sectors stagnation can simply mean marginalisation.

There’s no doubt many firms also have a lot of ground to make up after the ravages of the last few years, but ultimately “the only way is up”, and a business either has to grow or eventually become subsumed within a larger and more capable operation.

The sensible solutions are partnerships and merged functions between “like-minded” firms whose particular skills offer a complementary good fit in business terms for all concerned.

But that’s where prudence really does come to the fore, because for a business relationship between two companies to work well each has to be able to base its plans on total confidence on the other.

Precisely because the need to get accurate and accessible information has become so acute we’re now seeing the development and rapid refinement of “smart” services that allow companies to analyse the track record of potential partners in some detail.

Whereas once the exercise would be one of pure accountancy - never quite the exact science we sometimes appear to assume it is - firms seeking reliable and above all coherent information about another company can now assemble a good outline picture with a few clicks of a mouse.

The trend is to try and gain what amounts to a “holistic” view of a company rather than just a history of its performance peaks and troughs, because the real objective is to find whether that other firm is well-positioned to take a significant step forward that will benefit both partners.

The online resources proving most useful are surely those which present strata of information in a way that allows companies to form accurate broad assumptions about how a future business alliance might work.

Negative past performance is hardly an issue if the company concerned has adopted a different strategy and has proved it can work - but with the “old tech” approach an initial analysis would probably only accentuate difficulties and problems.

Now, at a time when businesses need the service most, reliability, ease of use and the vital element of “coherence” are all becoming readily available in a service which is continually adding to and refining its core proposition.

The UK market benefits most from this relatively new but already well-developed online phenomenon, because company provenance here is relatively compact in terms of data retrieval - while in the international arena things are inevitably more complex.

Companies facing what may be crucial decisions about future tie-ups with other firms aimed at profitable expansion need every help they can get, and while the mere ownership of good information is no guarantee of success it certainly gives CEO’s a good general picture on which to form a sound outline plan.

How that initial tranche of online-sourced information is used can then be deliberated upon at length, with accountancy playing a pivotal but not over-riding role.

The best companies arguably prosper by avoiding a “tick box” strategy that achieves targets without really delivering results, and by the same token the best plans take account of potential rather than a simple record of performance.

We are probably heading towards the stage where “smart” online information is becoming a prerequisite for any serious business position, rather than simply an option - and in a challenging and fast-changing world it’s perhaps reassuring to know that businesses already have a potent resource immediately available at their fingertips.