We work with a client that needs to parse details of a contact's company to a 3rd party system, basically allowing product usage for all contacts sharing that company ID to be permitted.

We can't use the Company Name, as there will be instances of shared names with franchises/locations etc. so the ID will be the only "fool-proof" solution.

In Contacts > Companies, I can expose in the UI the Record ID against the Companies, so I don't think it would be major overhaul to allow it as a merge field for webhooks/automations etc.