Delivering Excellent Service

APC Overnight was born in 1994 from a group of highly experienced delivery operators who collectively shared a passion for providing the highest levels of service to their customers.

Today, APC Overnight is the UK’s largest independent delivery network made up of 100 independent courier businesses who support 35,000, business with their parcel services.

APC Overnight regards the customer relationship between their delivery network and businesses that depend on them as a partnership. This approach has led to many customers continuing to partner with APC Overnight as a logistics provider for over ten, fifteen and even twenty y e a r s !

No matter the size of the request, and regardless of the number of consignments sent weekly, all customers are equally valued by APC Overnight.

APC Overnight’s customer base is exclusively small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and, historically, the bulk of deliveries have been Business to Business (B2B). Over the past five years, deliveries on behalf of APC Overnight’s SME customers have shifted more towards Business to Consumer (B2C). APC Overnight made it a requirement to better understand this shift, in order to make operationaldecisions and drive efficiencies.

Sean Stanley, Head of Business Systems at APC Overnight described the challenge that first led to engaging with AFD Software: “We had asked our incumbent supplier of address validation software if they could tell us the percentage split between our deliveries to business and residential addresses. Operationally, there are key differences between residential and business address deliveries. B2B deliveries are faster; during working hours there is always someone to take a parcel.

B2C takes longer – there isn’t always someone to take the parcel and with current restrictions around social distancing, they need to be contactless. The quote we were given just to provide the dataaround this split was astronomical.”

Partners in Data Quality
“When one of the team at AFD introduced themselves as a potential data quality partner, we asked them to do the analysis (which they did, at a realistic price) and found that 72% of deliveries across our network are currently B2C. This information has helped the whole business better position our customers’ experience, IT roadmap and remain best placed to help serve our customer base with their changing requirements.”

Following the initial address data analysis which AFD completed, APC Overnight decided to make the upgrade to AFD for all their address validation requirements last year.

Sean continues: “We integrated AFD within HypaShip’s booking platform New Horizon. When a customer wants to book a consignment, they can enter a postcode and the AFD service returns the correct, PAF-validated address. Accuracy at this stage of the process is essential to get high-quality last-mile delivery; the platform that we use for this is only as good as the address entered. Our last-mile delivery process involves route optimisation, TomTom data, historic average road speed at different times of the day, and property level geocoordinates – all helping the driver get to the exact delivery point as efficiently as possible.

Without the AFD element providing a valid address, a route planner would have to plan the route by manually locating it using mapping software and dropping a ‘pin’. This would be a relatively quick process in isolation, but we have over 1600 vans distributing from over 100 depots, each with route planners. This job is done first thing in the morning in a time-pressurised environment and, without the quality data that AFD provide, it would quickly lead to frustration for the route planners and would needlessly slow down the process.”

Proactive Customer Service
Changing supplier for such a key element within the delivery process should be a well-justified decision. AFD was trusted with delivering accurate address data to APC Overnight. Sean explains: “The integration work was very straightforward and whenever a question needed answering, we were able to pick up the phone and talk to Nick or another one of the team at AFD who not only knew the answers to our questions, but proactively wanted to help. This approachability was helpful and having someone to talk to made a huge difference, we feel valued as a customer.”

Real Insight from Data
Dervla Gallagher, Director of Business Infrastructure at APC added: “From a strategic point of view, the data from AFD has helped us better understand our customers’ requirements and ensure we are ready to deliver.

This Christmas we will see a significant increase in consumer deliveries and our customers are placing huge trust in us getting this right, making sure deliveries go to the right place at the expected time.

A consumer delivery often carries a greater emotional attachment, especially when Christmas gifts are involved. It is important to us that we have the right data solution to enable the businesses we serve and their customers to have an enjoyable B2C delivery experience, where we can set and meet delivery expectations.” With the very real prospect of almost all Christmas shopping taking place online this year, getting delivery data right will be more important than ever. AFD’s solutions help the Logistics Sector understand each delivery point, also enabling them to take relevant measures to ensure any current COVID guidelines around ‘contactless deliveries’ are met.

AFD Software helps thousands of organisations validate and cleanse contact data to help ensure delivery data is checked against the best possible sources.

www.apc-overnight.com

The Future is Mobile

Paultons Park is the number one theme park in 2020 according to TripAdvisor, an honour that has been held now for 5 years running. Home of Peppa Pig World and over 70 rides and attractions in the New Forest National Park, one million people visit each year for day trips or short breaks.

As a long-standing customer of AFD Software, Paultons Park have been able to benefit from advancements to our address lookup functionality as their requirements have changed over time. After data analysis revealed a change in customer behaviour, Paultons Park got in touch with AFD to see how we could help to enhance their customer journey.

We spoke with Rob Lee, Digital Specialist at Paultons Park, to talk through the history with AFD and the reason for the requested enhancement:

“We have used AFD since 2011 for our online address capture of guests booking to visit the Park. In those nine years, the solution has consistently delivered accurate validation of visitor addresses entered during the checkout process. Four years ago, we recognised that our bookings traffic was changing primarily to mobile devices, so we redeveloped our whole site and customer journey to be responsive for mobile. Now, 80% of our traffic comes from mobile devices, and we are constantly looking at how we can optimise the process to maintain the highest standards. As part of this optimisation review, we looked at the current address entry process and explored how to make this more ‘mobile-friendly’.”

Frictionless Checkout
Paultons Park had an aim to provide what they describe as a ‘frictionless checkout’, allowing a potential visitor to come onto their website, enter their details as quickly as possible (whether or not using a mobile device), and secure their tickets.

Rob continues: “Whilst address validation is great from a postcode or first line of an address, errors in the entry of the data or address selection are more likely to creep in on a mobile device. To overcome this and shave a few more seconds off the checkout process we worked with AFD Software to implement AFD’s new Geolocation address lookup. This allows a customer to press a button, then select their address which is listed in nearest order from the current location. Two-button taps, and all the address data is entered accurately.”

AFD’s Geolocation API functionality is our biggest recent step forward in removing the need for manual data entry. By using the GPS in your mobile device, we can instantly return your address with pinpoint accuracy. Our Geocode API appends property level latitude and longitude (lat/long) to address data already held by your organisation for pinpoint routing and visualisation. You can see how this functionality works in the screenshot to the right or read more at www.afd.co.uk/solutions/geolookup.

“We have used AFD since 2011 for our online address capture of guests booking to visit the Park. In those nine years, the solution has consistently delivered accurate validation of visitor addresses entered during the checkout process.

www.paultonspark.co.uk


Keeping the Country Moving

Stone Hardy is the UK market leader in the service and repair of tail lifts and shutters for commercial and passenger vehicles. First established in 1976, the organisation has grown, offering a 24/7 national service that helps ensure the vital logistics sector continues to operate.

Amanda Cook, Group Business Process Manager, explained the role Stone Hardy plays in keeping the nation’s infrastructure moving: “Our engineers service multiple sectors, including healthcare and food delivery, which have both grown in importance over the past 18 months.

Fast response times and experience are vital to get vehicles moving again. a supermarket must be unloaded within a certain time frame or the food will be wasted; a generator failure on a Mobile Covid Testing vehicle would put a halt to timecritical testing; a patient transfer vehicle with passengers who cannot be safely unloaded in a timely fashion would potentially even put health at risk – these are just a few examples of this urgency.

Minimising customer downtime is an essential part of our customer support, and we must fit in with our customers’ schedules – which can mean services and repairs late at night or during the weekends depending on the customer’s requirement. Our 24- hour service makes us a perfect fit.”

Business Critical
Of course providing a 24 hour service and timely despatch are not the only essential requirements to get the right result for Stone Hardy’s customers. Amanda continues: “Making sure our engineers get to the right place is essential. Prior to travelling to any location, we must check we are sending them to the correct address. Using Postcode Plus from AFD Software allows our team of 25 Controllers to quickly search for and confirm the address the engineer needs to get to – we simply cannot afford to get this information wrong.

Once we know the location of the vehicle, we then need to understand the specific situation. For unscheduled callouts in emergency situations, our systems allow us to prioritise the response based on each scenario.

Part of our emergency response undertaking is to have an engineer at the required location within 90 minutes from receiving the call. Each of our engineers’ vehicles is fitted with GPS tracking that gives our team a clear visual of who is best placed to respond, allowing us to deliver on our promised expected time of arrival.

This functionality is business critical to our organisation and we simply have to have accurate data. We would not be meeting the high levels of customer service and expectation if we were unable to locate the address we needed to get to – AFD has helped ensure this has never happened in the 5 years since they first partnered with us.”

Delivering Confidence
Selecting AFD Software as a data quality partner was an easy decision for Stone Hardy, Amanda concludes: “In 5 years of relying on AFD Software as our partner in address quality, we haven’t once had a depot manager complain that they haven’t been able to find the address or location to attend. Our requirements were listened to, understood and have been met.

Genuinely, I would say to any organisation that must get contact data right, The Postcode People at AFD Software do exactly what they say and deliver this accurate address data quickly and reliably.”

www.stonehardy.co.uk

KBIS Insurance –
25 Years a Customer

KBIS Insurance is the largest independent equine insurance provider in the UK and featured in the first edition of Postcode News 25 years ago in 1995! We recently talked with Guy Prest, Managing Director at KBIS, to learn more about the history of KBIS, the relationship with AFD and what the future holds.

Major household names in the Insurance sector rely on the accuracy of their customer data. Many have chosen AFD Software to validate the address data essential to their quotation and policy and risk systems.

KBIS Insurance is the largest independent equine insurance provider in the UK and featured in the first edition of Postcode News 25 years ago in 1995! We recently talked with Guy Prest, Managing Director at KBIS, to learn more about the history of KBIS, the relationship with AFD and what the future holds.

KBIS was first established in 1986 as a specialist bloodstock insurance provider under the trading name of Kershaw Bloodstock Insurance Services. In 1991 the company was acquired by current owners Guy and Liz Prest, who expanded the business to include insurance cover for the riding and competition horse.

KBIS continued to grow their portfolio of services to include horsebox insurance, liability insurance and specialist equestrian property insurance. This growth has not detracted from its core focus of providing a service that is both personal and efficient.

As equestrian insurance is a highly specialised field, all of the thirty staff have equine experience or are experts in their areas of insurance, ensuring that all customers can speak with someone who truly understands their requirements (just as we do with postcode software at AFD!). It is this focus on understanding and pleasing the customer that has helped KBIS become the largest independent equine insurance provider in the UK.

When we asked Guy to cast his mind back to 1995 and his journey with KBIS and AFD he commented; “We built our own customer and claims management system in 1992. Having used the system for a few years, we identified the requirement to quickly and accurately capture the address details of clients and incorporated AFD’s address validation in 1995. This has been in place ever since and throughout those 25 years, we have always been well served by AFD.

In 2016 we bought in new software to manage customers and their claims for certain parts of the organisation but found the system average at best. This led to the decision to put all our years of experience into a new, bespoke system that would give us exactly the functionality we needed as a business.

Paracode was designed and built from the ground up to continue to bestserve our customers and the organisation well into the future. We succeeded in our aims, and the result is a system that is highly adaptable with deep, customisable options that do not require development resource.

AFD was again chosen to continue to provide the address validation functionality in the new system. This was a very easy decision – there has always been a good relationship between our organisations and we know from years of real life experience that the solution delivers.

We soon realised that the system we had developed would not only benefit KBIS, but all insurers across the sector struggling with the limitations of currently available systems. We have therefore decided to launch Paracode as an insurance specific customer and claims management solution. As part of the system package, AFD will provide the address validation element to all users, delivering fast, accurate data entry.”

“Make Happy Customers” is a key focus of all the team at AFD Software, having longstanding relationships with many of our customers is testament to this focus. We look forward to celebrating another 25 years of successful business with KBIS, providing them and all our customers with excellent service and innovation in the years to come.

www.kbis.co.uk

Accurate Channels of Communication

Winner of national awards that recognise both the quality of teaching and its focus on student support and progression, South & City College Birmingham helps 22,000 students achieve their academic goals each year. For over 20 years the college has relied on AFD’s address validation, allowing staff to speed up the enrolment process and validate student address data.

Avoiding Costly Errors

We caught up with Paul Brownlow, Systems Development Manager, to understand the continued importance data validation plays at the college, and the new challenges that have arisen: “We have now moved our enrolment process online for students to complete by themselves. We needed to make this quick and easy to keep students engaged whilst also ensuring we accurately capture the required details.

By adding AFD’s address validation to the website, students can enter a postcode and house name/number to quickly find their address. This benefits both student and college by making the process faster, whilst also removing the need for staff to be manually checking and rectifying errors.

Funding for students is set at postcode level, so errors in addresses have a direct impact on the source of funding for that student. If we do not get this right and claim from the wrong source, we then have to rectify these mistakes, costing staff time having to report the mistake to the relevant funding bodies.”

Invaluable Proposition

Accurate Channels of Communication In addition to getting address data right, the college were concerned about the accuracy of studententered phone numbers and emails. Paul continues: “When contacting students for course interviews, open days and other key information, we found multiple instances where the email addresses and mobile phone numbers provided were wrong, either due to error or intentional misinformation.

 

Each student studying at the college between 16 and 18 years old effectively provides us with £5,000 per annum of vital funding, whilst students over 18 provide £2,000. Preventing one or two students from slipping through the net, because they would otherwise miss a key communication and fail to enrol, more than covers the cost of email and phone validation from AFD.”

In recommending AFD’s solutions Paul concludes: “From sales through to support, all the team at AFD Software are friendly and quick to respond to any queries we have. We had no problems in setting up the software when our requirements changed, and the length of time we have relied on The Postcode People at AFD is a testament to their skills and expertise.”

Harnessing Clean, Green Energy

In summer 2020 we doubled the capacity of our solar installation at the AFD Group HQ, Mountain View Innovation Centre (MVIC). By additionally investing in three Tesla Powerpacks later in the year (making this the Isle of Man’s biggest battery storage installation), to store the energy we generate, we expect to become completely self-sufficient in clean, green energy for twenty-four hours a day for around six months of the year.

Between April and September each year, we anticipate that the solar panels will be running MVIC by day, at the same time as charging our Tesla Powerpacks so that we can still utilise the energy when the sun goes down. From October through to March, on average 33% of the required power should still be carbon emission-free (more in a sunnier winter and spring!).

Since the panels went live, AFD has saved over 78 tonnes of CO2, which is the equivalent of 2,314 trees planted. (This is in addition to the more than 4000 physical trees that have already been planted around Mountain View!)

As well as having the largest solar storage system on the Isle of Man, AFD’s staff electric car scheme brings green motoring to over a third of the Isle of Man team. An average petrol or diesel car will produce 411 grams of CO2 per mile, so AFD’s electric fleet is saving 39 tonnes of CO2 per year!

An Unexpected Benefit


AFD’s green initiatives are driven from an awareness and motivation to reduce our carbon footprint and do what we can to protect the planet. However, this has given AFD an added benefit in recognition from customers who want to partner with suppliers who share the same environmental goals.

Speaking to David Smith, Data Operations Manager at WWF-UK (formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund), he had this to say: “Being an environmental charity, a part in our decision-making process of using AFD was how we viewed the company from a green perspective. The efforts AFD have gone to with solar panels, electric cars and other green initiatives at their head office was a factor in choosing AFD. Knowing that they had an awareness and similar goals as ourselves we knew that AFD was a company we are happy to do business with.”

If you share our care for the environment, that’s just one more good reason to prefer AFD as your address and data quality partners.

Find more information about Mountain View Innovation Centre at mvic.im/facilities/

Spotlight on online sales

High streets are empty, retail parks have shut their gates and all but essential shops are closed indefinitely. Whilst physical stores may be closed, consumers are finding different ways to buy goods and online shopping is surging. There is much less infection risk in shopping this way, especially if you are highly vulnerable. Business focus is switching like never before and needs to ensure its e-commerce presence is at its best to ensure consumers are able to buy their goods or services from you.

AFD specialises in e-commercetailored data validation solutions that allow your website to make the checkout process fast, free from error and ultimately lead to more sales, and of course that you can deliver efficiently. Our experts have developed a range of integration options for the most popular web platforms and technologies including; jQuery, Magento 1 & 2, Shopify and many more.

Our customers are not only amazed at how easily AFD’s range of solutions can be easily and quickly added to their sites, but also the instant benefits they bring. They are also reassured that there is a real person at the end of AFD’s phone lines to provide any extra help and guidance.

Nick Marlow – Project Manager of Platform Operations at Pro:Direct Sport commented; “AFD’s solution was initially used as a desktop service for telephone orders. As the focus switched to online so did our requirement from AFD. Postcode Plus and WorldAddress are both deployed on the website to ensure speed and accuracy during the customer’s buying journey, regardless of where they need the product delivered. Our customers expect the data entry process of ordering goods to be seamless, easy and error-free. Only allowing correct addresses to be entered eliminates lost orders and ensures customer satisfaction – essential to our business.”

www.prodirectsport.com

A Centenary of Excellence

Lonsdale Direct Solutions have a rich history as a renowned provider of quality printed products. 2017 marked their centenary year, confirmed with a certificate from Companies House. To celebrate reaching the landmark, Lonsdale began the ‘100 things for 100 years’ campaign. This included providing 100 meals for those less fortunate, donating 100 reams of paper to a school and completing a collective 100 miles at an endurance event which helped raise funds for a local charity. Through continued investment in technology, business processes and people, Lonsdale operates 24 hours a day with over 100 staff offering a full print, direct mail, storage, fulfilment and distribution service to over 480 clients.

Clean Data
We caught up with Simon Swan, Head of Data and Mailing, to understand the importance data integrity plays for the organisation and its clients: “When I joined Lonsdale 17 years ago, we had just started providing mailing services – enclosing, sorting and sending mail on behalf of our clients.

Two years later, to maintain the high expectations associated with the organisation, a data cleansing solution was required to help ensure each letter had a correct address. We selected AFD Refiner to cleanse and reformat the address data supplied by our clients prior to mailing, and have continued to rely on its functionality ever since.”

Glaring Error or Impossible to Spot?
When a letter is received at a household containing an error in the address or format, it immediately stands out to the occupier. When viewing address data that isn’t familiar to you, some errors which are glaring to the occupier can be invisible to the sender.

Simon continues: “We receive client-supplied data for a mailing and their request is typically to use the data as it is. Refiner allows us to quickly identify errors and highlight to our clients (with examples) why cleansing the addresses is essential.

Common address data issues that we are able to identify include: postcode casing being incorrect with no space (hd33wz should be HD3 3WZ), and address spacing (Daisylea lane which should be Daisy Lea Lane). Using AFD Refiner we are also able to easily identify duplicate addresses in the data as well as flag and remove international addresses.”

Refiner reduces time, waste and costs
The standout cost-saving of an automated address cleansing and reformatting solution is time; manually checking millions of addresses each year would be impossible for one person to complete.

Simon explains other benefits of AFD Refiner:

“Accurate data also cuts wasted mailings which have a material and opportunity cost to our clients. We are able to reduce the impact on the environment by not sending mail to an undeliverable or incorrect address and our clients have far fewer returns to manually process and discard.”

… and adds options
Downstream Access (DSA) providers are companies that have recently joined the postal market to offer alternative mailing services (in addition to Royal Mail) for the collection of sorted mail, and plug into the Royal Mail network for final processing and ‘last-mile delivery’.

AFD Refiner allows further cost savings by preparing data for processing by the DSA providers, which Simon explains:

“We work with all the DSA providers, giving our clients the widest range of postage options available. This allows them to choose between cost-effectiveness and speed of delivery, depending on the provider. Some of the DSA providers require the data to be appended with a Delivery Point Suffix (DPS), a two-character code that uniquely identifies each delivery point within a postcode. Refiner allows us to append a DPS to all the mailings that require it.”

“Last year we sent 12 million pieces of mail with complete confidence. AFD Refiner delivers exactly what we expect it to – we put poor data in and get good data out.”

Accuracy in the Millions
As household brands across almost every sector trust Lonsdale to deliver, their commitment to high quality, accurate data has allowed them to maintain their reputation. Simon continues:

“Last year we sent 12 million pieces of mail with complete confidence. AFD Refiner delivers exactly what we expect it to – we put poor data in and get good data out. I would recommend the postcode people at AFD Software as the best possible address and data quality partners for any organisation wanting to improve their address validation and cleansing processes.”

How confident are you in the accuracy of your organisation’s contact database or bought-in mailing lists?
AFD Software helps thousands of organisations spring clean their data all year round.

www.lonsdaledirect.co.uk

Highlight Of A Difficult Year - 2020

Over recent months Charities have had to respond to some incredibly difficult circumstances, yet themselves have been deeply impacted by restrictions on fundraising events, speaking opportunities at clubs and churches, and the loss of financial and volunteer resources. AFD wanted to ensure we could do even more in providing support to those who need it most during these difficult times.

Every year, the entire team of staff each have the opportunity to nominate a charity of their choice to receive a donation from AFD Software. It is a huge motivation for all staff to know that the work they do in their respective roles is helping to relieve the suffering of those in need. Our directors also nominate a range of organisations to receive support from the business.

In 2019 we celebrated donations totalling around £1,000,000 to over 70 charities.

In 2020 around 80 charities received donations totalling over £1,500,000 – part of our response to the increased level of need.

A couple of the charities using AFD’s donations to make a difference during the pandemic can be found below. COVID-19 changed all our lives in 2020 with more time spent at home, unable to visit families and friends. However, we are incredibly fortunate to live in a country where basic necessities and access to emergency healthcare has still been available to those in need.

Other parts of the world have not been so fortunate. Imagine the Kabubbu community in Uganda where some lack the basic resources to live, or the means to make a living, regardless of a global pandemic. Add to their already desperate situation an invisible disease that thrives on poor hygiene, and it’s impossible not to understand their plight. How do you choose between food or soap – which may save you from a fatal disease? The Quicken Trust aims to show the love of God in action to the Kabubbu community in Uganda by providing the community with the resources they lack, assisting them in acquiring skills and training to continue working towards self-sustainability. AFD’s donation to the Quicken Trust’s COVID-19 appeal provided 2 deliveries of 850 huge bars of soap which were distributed to households, to enable regular handwashing as a deterrent against the virus. 2 acres of land and maize flour were also purchased with the donation, to help prevent hunger in the community and further the work towards self-sustainability.

Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) uses light aircraft to provide flights for 2,000 aid, development and Christian mission organisations, enabling them to reach remote and isolated communities across the developing world with help, hope and healing.

Help, hope and healing were already in short supply in isolated communities across the developing world prior to COVID-19. In the Tibetsti Mountains, the delivery of oxygen masks and temperature devices were required to effectively screen and treat patients with the disease. One of Mission Aviation Fellowship’s (MAF) light aircraft was able to make the lifechanging delivery to this remote community in Chad. AFD’s donation is helping MAF worldwide to keep the aircraft and personnel which deliver such vital services ready and able to respond to the impact of COVID-19 in the developing world – in addition to the usual needs of isolated communities for basic supplies and emergency medical evacuations.

You can read about the incredible work of all the charities supported in 2020 and how the donations from AFD will help them continue to relieve suffering at www.afd.co.uk/charity-2020/

The Best Tools For The Job

Founded in 1972, Axminster Tools are a family-run business that pride themselves on their strong customer service values. With eight stores across the UK, a formidable online presence and a wholesale arm that also sells even to competitors, Axminster are recognised as one of the major leaders in the tools and machinery market. AFD Software was chosen as a partner in data quality to overcome three major challenges: cleanse almost one million customer addresses; classify each customer as business or consumer; and improve address validation at the point of entry.

 

A Refreshing Change – but not as expected
Traditionally a catalogue business, a few years ago Axminster made the huge decision to pull the plug on their six-hundred-page bi-annual catalogue, so that they could focus on their online business. However, contrary to expectation, customer feedback soon told them that their customers wanted the catalogue back!

Axminster knew that it would not be sensible to just do what they had done before with the catalogue, which had felt wasteful and led to the original decision to withdraw it. We spoke to Damion Norcombe, Chief Information Officer at Axminster, to understand how important clean data would be in reducing wasted cost, maximising delivery success, and driving new sales from the relaunched catalogue: “We knew we needed to cleanse our customer address data before relaunching the catalogue. Previously, staff would have had to sort through many large bags of returned catalogues numbering in the thousands that hadn’t reached their intended destination – costing us valuable staff time. A returned catalogue is not only a waste of printing and postage cost, there is an environmental cost and an opportunity cost. For every returned catalogue, a customer has missed vital communication and the business has missed a sales opportunity.”

AFD Refiner was used to cleanse and reformat Axminster’s customer address database (almost one million records) against the Royal Mail Postcode Address File.

“There is a can-do attitude that we get with everyone at AFD, nothing is an issue, promises are kept, and this is important from a software partner – a refreshing change.”

After cleansing, Damion was able to report that: “From a mailing of 40,000 catalogues to customers that had been active in the last 12 months we have had only 250 returns: this is a sharp decline in returns and a clear win following the data cleanse. We now have confidence that our customers’ address data is accurate.” Following the success of the cleansing project, Damion describes what’s next: “The plans around the data and catalogue is to analyse the AFD Censation data (Geodemographic Classification System) of customers that have purchased after receiving the catalogue, and add more customers into future mailings that match the same customer profile.”

 

Know Your Customer
Incorrectly classifying data can lead to missed opportunities, inappropriate levels of service and customer frustration. Charlie Cross, Chief Sales Manager at Axminster, explains the complex problem of understanding customers: “Because our customer base is diverse and made up from consumers as well as businesses, understanding whether a customer is a DIY enthusiast buying tools for a new project or a flooring contractor living at their registered business address is critical in how we manage them.

Business data including turnover, number of staff and sector from AFD Names & Numbers has enabled us to quickly and correctly classify our customers. We now know who our customers are and can ensure that they receive the correct levels of service.”

How many Steves?
Axminster have used AFD Names & Numbers in a novel way in their customer classification process. Charlie continues: “Through the classification process, we have been able to build customer personae.

For example, we’ve called one persona ‘Steve’ – it includes all furnituremakers with a specific turnover range and number of employees. We can then understand how many ‘Steves’ are in the database, what they buy and their preferred sales channel (online, in store or over the phone). Looking ahead to our plans for growth, business data from AFD will be used to understand our market share and find more customers that match the same personae as our ‘ideal customers’.”

 

An Automatic Upgrade
When Axminister used a previous supplier of address validation, key problems were identified around data updates, as Damion recalls: “Before partnering with AFD for address validation instore and online, applying essential data updates was a laborious manual job for each of our eight stores and the website. Each file would be a large download and then after that was complete, the server would need updating for the changes to take effect online. This was not only time consuming but there were instances when during the update process, there would be an error or an interruption and the address validation would not work. This led to either our sales processes slowing down, or not having any validations in place which then led to address errors and potentially delivery failure, completely obviating the benefits of having invested in address validation in the first place. Following the upgrade to AFD, this process is completely automated – saving us valuable man hours and removing the risk of the previous errors encountered.”

Exceeding Expectations

As well as updates now being automatic, Axminster were pleased to find that the data they receive from AFD is also better than their previous supplier. Damion continues: “AFD’s business data is more up-to-date, especially useful when we have a clear requirement to understand our customers and provide the correct level of service to them.”

 

The definition of “good”
Partnering with a new supplier can often cause complications, but Axminster found working with AFD to be a very straightforward and easy process. Damion gives his recommendation: “Any questions that have come up have been answered and solved straightaway, the solutions run themselves and we are pleased with the products and services we have had so far.

There is a can-do attitude that we get with everyone at AFD, nothing is an issue, promises are kept, and this is important from a software partner – a refreshing change.”

Charlie adds: “We deal with lots of suppliers and partners and we know what good looks like, and we also know what bad looks like. As a supplier, AFD Software is a clear example of what good looks like as a partner.”

www.axminstertools.com

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