Catalog Numbers with leading Zeros

As part of our new implementation, we have got many courses in the institution where catalog numbers have leading zeros. But in campus solutions leading zeros will be removed while saving the course.

can anyone have idea about the reason why leading zeros are being trimmed while saving and what kind of impacts would be there if we comment the particular piece of code which removes the leading zeros?

One of the solution we thought is to have a prefix (like 'X') for those with leading zeros but unfortunately many of our catalog numbers length is more than 6 with all numeric. If we prefix catalog number with any character might restrict the length usage of the catalog number.