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ADDRESS MANAGEMENT
Address quality for
a greener enterprise
Address Quality is an issue which is rising up
the agenda as companies recognise the
potential in cost savings and the
environment in getting this process right,
Damian Morris discusses.
ithin the last ten years in short a painless reduction in their carbon information can immediately be requested.
W
general awareness of footprint that makes good economic sense. This instant address verification also makes it
environmental easier to flag duplicate entries.
concerns has nearly VALIDATE ADDRESSES AT ALL POINTS OF ENTRY The cost of an address capture solution for
doubled. Independent It may be surprising to realise how much of an every data entry point is quickly offset by the
Studies conducted by organization’s address quality problem begins savings incurred by reducing undeliverable
The Carbon Trust and ICM Omnibus now show at the point of entry, and cannot be fully mail, manual correction of addresses and lost
that three-quarters of consumers are concerned satisfied with a back-end processing method. productivity. When a complete address can be
about climate change and what they can do to The reason is simple: addresses already in a entered with as little as a Postcode and house
make a positive impact. Even the current database can only be corrected and updated if number, Web forms can be shorter, which
economic situation has only drawn more there is enough valid information for the encourages more people to complete them.
attention to green business practices. Beyond software to identify a match. If a sufficiently More advanced software can identify an
the hope for economic recovery through the erroneous record is entered, the batch process address with only a partial company name.
creation of green business, organisations are will not have enough correct data to Implementation need not create a huge IT or
realising that environmentally friendly practices determine which address it should be. training burden. Once installed, the right
can save money today, often with little Most organisations make use of address software is intuitive enough for data entry
additional start-up expense. One such area is validation software in their call centre, but representatives to learn quickly. Features can
address data quality. invalid address make it into their database include visual field mapping, making it easy to
The quality of an organisation’s address data through other conduits, such as Web forms, set up and use with any entry form, in any
impacts their ability to efficiently communicate written requests for information, applications application or browser.
with prospects and customers, coordinate and the like. A comprehensive solution attends
orders and fulfilment operations, and control to the quality of addresses at every point. CLEANSE AND UPDATE EXISTING ADDRESSES
postage, material and labour costs. Improving Using point-of-entry verification, errors are Properly cleansing and updating address lists
address quality through point-of-entry detected and corrected while the original data further reduces the impact on the
validation, regular database cleansing and is being recorded. After all, the person making environment. Removing duplicates,
removing duplicate entries allows an the entry is the best person to fix an error goneaways and undeliverable addresses
organisation to control costs and produce only before it is lost inside a massive address file. If before mailing saves paper and energy that
the materials needed to achieve business goals, the address doesn’t pass verification, more would be wasted on mail that could never
10 OPINIONS ON DATA | MAY 2009
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