In this Summer edition of Postcode News, we explore how Arden University supports more than 27,000 students by embedding data accuracy at the heart of its digital transformation. Discover how AFD’s validation tools are helping improve communication, streamline compliance, and deliver a better student experience.
While AFD’s solutions help ensure contact data is accurate at the point of entry, what happens when validation is bypassed, or when legacy records are imported in bulk? Discover how AFD Refiner solves this challenge by cleansing and enriching your contact databases.
Addresses from Australia. Phone numbers from France. Emails from Egypt! Wherever your customer is, however you communicate with them – the goal is a solid “golden contact record”. That was the goal and challenge for Arden University.
Arden is a modern UK university with a mission to make higher education more accessible. Originally founded in 1990 as an online learning partner for traditional universities, it became an independent university in 2015 and now delivers its own degrees to students worldwide.
In just 7 years, Arden University has enjoyed extraordinary growth – from 5,000 students in 2018 to over 27,000 today, and turnover rising from £16M to £189M. System changes were required to support this growth and Stephen Wallace, Head of Student Information Systems, has led the implementation of a new student information system that will help manage the student journey from application to graduation and beyond.
A key requirement for the new system would be accurate student contact data. Analysis of data sent to AFD by partner universities that rely on our solutions, revealed that 17% of address records were incorrect, while 5.3% of phone numbers and 4.3% of email addresses were invalid.
In discussing the importance of accurate contact data for Arden University, Stephen explains: “Poor contact data undermines our operations, hampers student success, and impedes our growth and revenue development. It is also a barrier to our ability to understand our student ‘customer’ data and our ability to prepare statutory reports. We need high-quality address, email, and phone data.”
Arden University operates in a competitive international environment. “If a student applies and doesn’t hear back, they study elsewhere. When students are investing up to £50,000 in their university education , these losses quickly add up for a university. It’s essential we collect accurate contact data as part of our student acquisition processes.”
Stephen continues: “Once the student is here, we take our responsibility seriously to offer a level of support that leads to their success. If a student misses a class unexpectedly, we want to reach out quickly. Maybe they need learning support, pastoral care, or even some counselling. It’s about being able to contact them through all available channels. We know support affects student retention, the final exam result, their future, and our reputation – so poor contact data can lead to serious failures.”
Arden has implemented AFD’s solutions to validate address, email, and phone data, ensuring accuracy at the point of entry by students or staff.
Each year, every university must submit detailed data returns to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) who mandate strict reporting criteria. This includes contact data accuracy and layout. Stephen explains the onerous task: “Currently, it takes a team of 6 people, 6-9 months a year, to manually extract and manipulate student data for HESA reporting. With AFD ensuring address, email, and phone data is accurate and formatted correctly, we can dramatically reduce this gigantic job, and our staff can do better things with the time saved.”
“Any single one of the issues I’ve outlined is important, but together they are critical to our operation, student success, and Arden’s success. To solve all of them we partnered with AFD. Nick is our key contact there, and he has been fantastic from initially scoping our requirements, through to implementation and ongoing growth. He checks in regularly, spots usage trends before they become problems, and suggests solutions that make sense for us. That kind of personal touch really matters.”
AFD’s unparalleled customer service leads to similar stories of cost savings, efficiency, retention, and excellence across multiple sectors including retail, not-for profit, and logistics.
How could AFD Software help you cut costs, boost revenue, increase customer satisfaction, and get better analysis – through better contact data?
Contact The Postcode People today to discuss your specific requirements with The Postcode People on 0333 433 0711 or email postcode@afd.co.uk.
As Arden University described, validating contact data when it is entered is best practice, but what’s the solution when people bypass validation forms or your organisation uses legacy contact databases?
That’s where AFD Refiner comes in. It’s our powerful data cleansing solution that does the heavy lifting by validating, correcting, and enhancing your *address, email, and phone data in bulk. Fast, accurate, and easy to deploy (hosted service or locally on your infrastructure), Refiner is trusted by organisations like Go.Compare, DPD, and Beaverbrooks who know that clean data underpins great customer service.
As one customer put it: “AFD helps us ensure rapid, reliable address data integrity. Saving even just a few minutes per driver boosts deliveries and reduces stress, getting drivers on the road faster with more time to serve customers.”
Gurnam Singh, Enterprise Architect at DPD.
During the cleansing process, Refiner can append a host of address-linked datasets from property age, type, and value to demographic data about the occupants.
| Cleansing | Inaccurate address data |  |
| Highlighting | Invalid emails and phone numbers | |
| Flagging | Contacts who have moved or died | |
*Address data cleansing can be achieved only when there is enough information in the input address to achieve a unique match. “18, HD3 2” would not match to a unique address. “18, HD32af” would.
AFD offers a free Contact Data Health Check to highlight the accuracy of your data. It’s secure, quick, and comes with tailored advice from a Postcode People Data Quality Expert on how to fix errors and prevent inaccuracy in the future.
Start your health check today at: www.afd.co.uk/healthcheck
Growing up in a military family meant life was anything but static for Josh, who moved every couple of years across Germany and the east coast of the United States. Most recently, Josh relocated from Texas to the Isle of Man to join the Postcode People at AFD.
Joining AFD as a DevOps Engineer, Josh is part of the team responsible for helping ensure AFD’s services remain available and resilient for customers around the clock. With a strong focus on simplifying complex systems and automating routine processes, Josh works to enable continual service improvement and maintain high system resilience.
Prior to joining AFD three years ago, Josh worked in the USA as a Software Engineer for a government contractor, developing applications for public sector agencies. It was during this time that he transitioned into DevOps by introducing Infrastructure as Code practices. When he spotted the opening at AFD, he applied (despite living thousands of miles away) and is glad he took the chance.
Having worked for much larger organisations in the past, Josh particularly enjoys the visibility of impact at AFD. “Here, I can clearly see how my work benefits the team and our customers.”
Josh’s move to the Isle of Man was also motivated by personal heritage, Comish is a Manx name, and living in his ancestral homeland adds a meaningful dimension to the relocation. “It’s why we moved here,” he says of the island, which remains the favourite place he has visited so far – though Hawaii, where some of the rest of his family live, remains a firm favourite too.
At home, life is full of energy with three young children, including one-year-old twins. In quieter moments, Josh enjoys cooking, music, computers, and studying languages; he’s fluent in Tagalog (spoken in the Philippines), and is currently learning Manx, German, and Japanese.
Between April and June 2025 there were significant updates to data on PAF. These included 9 new localities; 5,042 new postcodes; 88,116 new delivery points; and 16,887 delivery point changes.
The most up-to-date PAF data is available now in our latest Q.3/25 update. You can order updates for any AFD software solution by calling 0333 433 0711 or emailing postcode@afd.co.uk.
We serve thousands of organisations and a network of hundreds of partners across multiple industry sectors, enabling them to have full confidence in their contact data.