As important as knowing who your customers are is knowing where they are

By Aaron Wallace

Let me ask you a question. Would you build your house on a foundation of sand? Of course you wouldn’t. The sand would shift, which would compromise the entire structure and your new home would come tumbling down like a house of cards on a windy afternoon. In fact, no one would intentionally build any structure, from a mansion to a dog house, on an unsound or structurally inadequate base.

If you think about it, the foundation, regardless of function, is the most critical part of any project. By its very definition, a foundation is an underlying basis upon which something stands or is supported. So it just makes good sense that every foundation be as strong and structurally sound as possible.

Let’s keep the foundation thought going, but switch gears from building a house to building sound data quality. One of the biggest challenges that companies, regardless of size, are facing today is bad customer data. In particular, bad address data.

Bad address quality can lead to a variety of questions, some of which you have probably asked yourself and your team on multiple occasions. These questions range from, “Why do we have so much returned mail?” to “Why can’t I get a single, comprehensive view of our customers?” and “Why is our response rate so low?” These questions are just a representation of the many issues that bad address data can and will perpetuate.

More important than the questions you are asking yourself and your team are the questions your customers are asking themselves about your company, including, “Why are we receiving duplicate statements and offers?” and “Why aren’t we receiving products and services on time?”

Having incorrect or incomplete address data in your customer records is comparable to having a silent, insidious virus swirling through your systems. This virus spreads from one siloed database to the next, adversely affecting every department in its path. All of this is taking place in the background and without your knowledge, prohibiting you from ever obtaining a true understanding and 360° view of your customers.

In addition to being the silent tormentor, bad address data and the associated struggles are here to stay. The United States Census Bureau reports that approximately 40 million Americans relocate each year. Businesses are also on the move due to a variety of business and economic reasons. The result of this on-the-move population is that billions of mail pieces are returned or discarded every year. This is money out of your company’s pocket through lost revenue, wasted postage, and customer churn. This doesn’t take into account the unrealized postal discounts and the headcount spend required to sort through and address those erroneous mail pieces.

Another problem related to the bad address dilemma is duplicate customer records. For example, you have a customer entered in a marketing database as John Roberts; in a customer service database as Robert John; and in a sales database as J. R. Roberts. These three records act as three separate customers, skewing analytics, prohibiting relationship building, and hindering accurate communications. In addition, these records may never be synced up due to the disparate nature of your database systems and lack of duplicate record identification.

Although these problems seem dire, there is a logical and easy solution to the bad data epidemic. It is address validation, specifically, a real-time and batch address validation solution. This solution will not only correct your address data, but also enable you to enact standardization procedures that will ensure your address data is consistent and accurate across systems. These standardized addresses can then be used as the foundation to identify and correct duplicate customer records in a separate matching process.

That is a high-level description of a very powerful business tool, Pitney Bowes Software Address Validation for NetSuite. This solution is now available to all NetSuite customers and is the answer to most address validation and customer matching problems.

Essentially, this solution allows your customers to validate their addresses in real time. This is a welcomed departure and an evolution from the manual correction process. No longer will you need resources to sort through returned mail to identify and update records. Address Validation for NetSuite standardizes and validates address data entered into the NetSuite user interface, providing optimum address quality from the first point of contact.

To dive a little deeper into the solution’s details, Address Validation for NetSuite provides support for multiple postal programs including Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS), Delivery Point Validation (DPV), Residential Delivery Indicator (RDI), Early Warning System (EWS), Locatable Address Correction System (LACS) Link, and Suite Link. The solution standardizes and validates address data in 240 countries and is updated on a monthly basis to ensure that the most accurate data is available when you need it most.

Address validation is not a flashy solution—it is a standard piece of software. But what it lacks in glitzy appeal, it more than makes up for in value.

You will realize this value by saving money on returned mail, customer churn, postage costs, and missed opportunities; qualifying for deep postal discounts; capturing data faster and more accurately; validating data quality at the point of entry; streamlining downstream processes; improving the deliverability of goods and communications; matching data across systems to eliminate duplicate records; reaching the right customer at the right time with the right message; and increasing the return on marketing investments.

Good data, especially good address data, is paramount to success in business today. In fact, the address is just the first step to becoming location aware. Determining your customer’s accurate location provides a true understanding of the contextual information that makes up that customer. This insight leads to a better relationship with the customer for you and a better customer experience with your company. It is a win-win situation.

This win-win attitude is being felt by the Ottawa-based charity, The Caring and Sharing Exchange, which recently began using the Address Validation for NetSuite. Executive Director Cindy Smith says, “It’s incredible—the Pitney Bowes Software Address Validation for NetSuite allows the Caring and Sharing Exchange to send the much-needed assistance to the right addresses of those families in need; eliminating duplicate addresses means that each individual and family in need is helped only once, and that saves the Ottawa community over $600,000 that can be reinvested back into the community.”

As you gain experience with address validation through the use of Pitney Bowes Software Address Validation for NetSuite, you will quickly see the strong foundation that is built through quality, standardized, and accurate data. It is this foundation that is the basis for all other business analytics such as location intelligence, geocoding, data visualization, and enrichment, to name a few.

This foundation is just the beginning and will be the evolutionary start of your journey toward a more location-aware and robust corporate data governance standard and process.

Let the building process begin!

About Author

Aaron Wallace is a Senior Product Manager for Data Quality at Pitney Bowes Software. He is based in Pitney’s Austin Texas office and has been with Pitney Bowes for 7 years. Aaron has 18 years of experience in the Enterprise Software space, with 10 years experience in Enterprise Data Management and Data Quality, along with an extensive background in designing and building enterprise software across a number of verticals.

The statement and opinions contained herein are those of Pitney Bowes Software and not of NetSuite. NetSuite has not verified any statements or claims herein and assumes no responsibility for such statements or claims.