A poor-quality address validation solution directly increases internal costs and diverts scarce and expensive resources to correcting unnecessary errors. These errors impact customer service, reputation and repeat business. The stories of frustration are often hidden within the business.
Any address validation solution that is incomplete or has inaccurate, ambiguous or badly formatted addresses – transfers the true costs of inaccuracy into your organisation. The issues include non-delivery, wrong delivery, delayed delivery, duplicate records, inability to link to other datasets and poor data structures hampering analysis.
The financial consequences include the cost of error correction, the cost of wasted driver time seeking addresses, poor customer service and lost customers. The truth of this is clearly demonstrated in the examples below and the comments of customers who have tried cheaper alternatives and then either returned to or turned to AFD to sort it out.
All address and location data used by AFD Software is correctly licensed, regularly updated and from authoritative sources. For Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we license datasets from the two key UK sources – Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey. Each of the c.32 million UK address records has a unique reference. International address data only comes from verifiable, tested and trusted sources.
Information is actively updated resulting in the best data available. For example, Royal Mail utilises its 90,000 postal workers to feedback changes to addresses they see as they walk the routes. This information along with customer feedback and reports of failed deliveries from large retailers lead to substantial and significant changes to the address file – including adding new addresses, making changes to existing ones, or removing old ones.
AFD’s solution finds it:
A non PAF based solution does not:
| Feature | AFD | Non PAF Other |
|---|---|---|
| Complete Data | ✓ | ✗ |
| Authoritative Sources | ✓ | ✗ |
| Facilitates Inter-Operability | ✓ | ✗ |
| Reduced Duplicates | ✓ | ✗ |
| Consistent Structures | ✓ | ✗ |
| Easy Data Appending | ✓ | ✗ |
| Apartments Included | ✓ | ✗ |
| New Builds Included | ✓ | ✗ |
| Rural Addresses Included | ✓ | ✗ |
| BFPO included | ✓ | ✗ |
| Correct Validation on Entry | ✓ | ✗ |
| Address Cleansing + Validate | ✓ | ✗ |
For Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we license authoritative datasets from the two key UK sources- Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey. This information is actively updated resulting in the best data available. Each of the c.32 million UK address records has a unique reference. International address data only comes from verifiable, tested and trusted sources.
Within this specialist field AFD provide access to a further c.900K specific flats and building unit numbers not available on the main Royal Mail PAF file. We also identify and provide full address data on over 300,000 newly built properties and still under construction properties. We have our eye firmly on completeness, accuracy and consistency in structure.
Any trustworthy database has consistent structure at its heart. All address data returned from AFD solutions is consistently structured – every time.
We’ve built an address cleansing engine able to correct flaws in existing and legacy address data. It results in the cleanest possible address data and enables you to ensure that each address added to your database is reliable and held in a consistent format.
Developers find AFD’s solutions easy and intuitive to integrate into any platform and any application. Support is only from real experts in our real HQ, dedicated to understanding and solving any issues raised.
Missing, outdated, inaccurate address data contains hidden ambiguity and delivers false positive matches.
Without UK and international postal address standards and structures it is difficult or impossible to pass data between systems effectively and to refer to external data sources such as credit reference agencies. The creation of duplicate records is more likely. It is difficult to append other data such as accurate geo-codes (or datasets relevant to your sector) to release the value at postcode or address level.
Crowd sourced addresses, or addresses “scraped” from the internet result in millions of missing addresses and poor address quality. Apartment, new builds and rural addresses are high risk. Where addresses are missing – validation is impossible – and error prone free text entry is the only option. This in turn creates the costly overhead of queries, poor service, non-delivery and attrition which professional address validation solutions are designed to prevent.
Of course, where the source address data is simply wrong – a “false positive” validation occurs.
What’s the cost to your organisation if incorrect bank details are entered and payments fail? Lost time, customer frustration, and potential regulatory exposure.
What’s the impact if a donor mistypes their address or payment details? Lost income, failed Gift Aid claims, and damaged supporter relationships.
What’s the cost if a driver can’t find the right delivery address? Increased fuel use, missed deliveries, returns, and unhappy customers.
What’s the risk if incoming data is inaccurate? Wasted processing, corrupted results, and poor business decisions.
What’s the cost if materials are sent to the wrong site? Project delays, wasted stock, and frustrated contractors.
What happens if a customer’s address is entered incorrectly? Invalid cover, compliance issues, and costly claim disputes.
What’s the impact if court papers or contracts are sent to the wrong address? Missed deadlines, reputational risk, and potential negligence claims.
What’s the cost if a patient’s address or contact details are wrong? Missed appointments, medication errors, and serious safeguarding risks.
What is the cost to a university if they cannot validate a student's address? Up to £50,000 in funding.
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.