In July 2015, Eire’s (southern Ireland’s) new postcode system “Eircode” was launched – which gave every single one of the 2.2 million letterbox addresses in Ireland its own unique Eircode. Prior to the introduction of Eircode, over 35% of addresses were not uniquely identifiable, making deliveries and identification of individual properties difficult.
Previously, organisations and people sending mail and parcels were entirely reliant on the local knowledge of the postie or courier. In addition, insurance and financial institutions had been unable to specifically identify an individual’s address, exposing themselves to expensive risks from potentially fraudulent house insurance claims and financial applications for loans, credit cards and mortgages. Even if no fraud was intended, the margin for error and potential for confusion was huge with many individuals (including some possibly with the same name) often sharing the same address.
Coinciding with the launch of the new system, AFD added Eircode data validation to its range of solutions, allowing organisations to validate and lookup Irish* addresses with an Eircode (*Northern Irish addresses have always been an integral part of AFD’s products based on the United Kingdom Postcode Address File).
Continual development and improvement are core to AFD’s success and maintaining and satisfying high customer expectations. Our Eircode solution has recently been rebuilt from the ground up to significantly speed up the time it takes to find and return every single one of the 2.2 million letterbox addresses in Ireland, and improve the speed with which vital data updates can be provided. Improvements have also been made to make the quality of data even better and search capabilities have been enhanced, making Irish addresses easier to locate.
Growing popularity
Eircode use has increased following a series of TV advertisements emphasising how Eircode can make life easier (see an amusing example here), and as household brands have requested an Eircode to complete an order that requires a delivery address. Tesco, Domino’s Pizza, Curry’s PC World and Boots are just a few of the retailers who now require an Eircode. A recent survey to understand Eircode usage showed that since its introduction in 2015, 72% of Irish homeowners have now used their Eircode, 76% know what their Eircode is, and 69% said Eircode’s are useful.
Data quality is always important, but it can be literally of life or death importance in the Health Sector. Patient care, confidentiality, performance monitoring and correct funding are all impacted by data accuracy. To ensure correct care and confidentiality, patient data needs to be accurate, complete and valid. Any staff member inputting data will need the tools in place to achieve this.
Clinical Accuracy
Incorrect patient information can detrimentally impact levels of care. Imagine the scenario of a patient attending hospital. Diagnosis and notes are passed to the patient’s registered GP and information regarding next steps, appointments, and treatment are sent to the patient. If information within the Patient Administration System (PAS) is incorrect then notification of appointments could be missed, or the GP may be unaware of their patient’s diagnosis and treatment, leading to a compromise in care.
Now picture the scene where confidential results of a medical test are sent to someone other than the intended recipient. That would be a very serious breach of data security. Or if someone received an incorrectly addressed embarrassing invitation to a clinic? What if it was your neighbour and it was meant for you? One wrong number being entered in an address can easily lead to such situations.
Certain data items are used in activity and performance measurement; any compromise in quality here will provide false information and affect plans of improvement to levels of care. As NHS organisations are naturally required to report patient activity accurately, if there is any question mark around quality of data, a trust could see a reduction in funding.
Understanding Accurate Patient Data
The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust is the only specialist hospital trust in the UK dedicated to providing comprehensive Neurology, Neurosurgery, spinal and pain management services. With one of the biggest and busiest Neurosurgery departments in the UK, they serve a catchment area of 3.5 million people across Merseyside, Cheshire, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, the Isle of Man, North Wales and beyond.
We caught up with Val Hayden, Patient Administration System & Data Quality Manager at The Walton Centre, to understand the critical importance of data accuracy within the sector. Jackie continued: “We have used AFD’s data controls for ten years now and have enjoyed a good working relationship. Recently, AFD implemented the inclusion of the OfS POLAR (Participation of Local Areas) data in AFD’s Refiner product, allowing us to automatically append this important data in a batch process. Since this data shows how likely young people are to participate in higher education according to where they live, we are then able to target specific areas with marketing efforts in a bid to meet targets for widening participation and essential funding.”
“The Centre has a data quality policy in place, part of the outworking of this policy is validating patient details within the PAS. This means any staff at The Centre who use the PAS and register patients requires the functionality to validate contact data at the point of entry.
Specifically, we use property level address validation from AFD Software and have had the solution in place for the past six years. We have over 500,000 patient records on the database and making sure all details of the patient’s full address are accurate is essential.
Along with accuracy, speed of data entry and the format it is stored in are also important for the Centre. Staff and patients alike benefit from faster data entry as time can be better spent on making patients feel comfortable and providing the correct level of care as opposed to filling out and doublechecking each part of their address. Storing data in the correct format means that addresses are more easily searchable, retrievable and reportable, further enforcing the data quality policy.” Key to the completion of the survey is its successful delivery to the intended recipient. The challenge rests with each Higher Education institution to hold accurate contact data of their alumni.
Why AFD?
Customer feedback helps AFD continually improve our services and better understand the datarelated pains specific to each industry. In the Health sector for example, ensuring patients are invited to receive essential care in a timely fashion via appointment letters in the post, and that private correspondence is sent to the right person.
When asked why AFD Software was chosen to replace their incumbent supplier Val answered;
“AFD simply offered more value than our incumbent supplier. Plus, we had a huge issue with data updates, our previous supplier used to produce quarterly CDs which were easily mislaid! We would have periods where staff would be manually inputting addresses which led to data quality issues and slowed the data entry. With AFD’s solution, the quarterly updates are applied automatically so we know we always have the latest data and aren’t subject to any interim periods of resorting to a slow, error-prone manual alternative.
AFD’s licensing of our requirements was clear and more competitive when we considered all the problems the AFD solution was overcoming.
Integrating within our PAS was remarkably quick and easy to setup – it took only a couple of hours, and caused us no headaches. Any planned upgrade can be met with hesitation when a business-critical system is being altered, but, having experienced how smooth the transition was for us, we would recommend other trusts to sit down with AFD and see how they can improve their data quality processes.”
For over 38 years AFD Software has been trusted by thousands of organisations across almost every sector to get their data right. Our solutions help ensure that your organisation is built upon the strong foundation of an accurate customer database. Specifically, we validate name, address, bank, email and telephone data.
Many people know of the expression “Red-brick universities”, but did you know there are “Plateglass universities” too? At the time of year when many A level students await results to see if they can get into the Higher Education (HE) institution of their choice, (whether Red-brick, Plateglass or any other kind!), we look at the challenges which face the HE sector around capturing student data, reporting on graduate outcomes and widening participation to groups less likely to matriculate.
First Class in Accuracy
In the academic year 2017-18 there were 2.34 million students studying across 164 Higher Education (HE) institutions. A recent survey of 64 of these institutions showed that data consistency and accuracy has grown in importance. Over 90% of respondents agreed and 65% believed this to be a “top priority”.
A Statutory Requirement
Universities, Higher Education colleges and other specialist providers of HE have a statutory requirement to report data to the HE funding bodies. HESA, the Higher Education Statistics Agency, works closely with providers to support this process and to analyse and assure the quality of the data they submit.
During the annual HESA return – which takes place in September and October – institutions can resubmit as many times as necessary during the collection. At the end of the collection, the data is signed off and delivered to statutory customers (HE funding bodies). Amendments after this time go into the Fixed Database (post-collection amendments) and incur a charge of 20% of the institution’s annual subscription fee to HESA (which is typically around £30,000). A single error in the return would incur a charge and require a manual fix – also costing valuable man-hours.
Jackie Thompson, Student Data Manager at The University of Bolton, uses AFD’s batch cleansing solution, Refiner, to help ensure student data consistency and accuracy: “When we receive student data from UCAS, the address data is often very poor quality, for example, the full address may be on one line, or there’s a correct address but incorrect postcode, parts of the address are missing etc. Refiner helps fix these issues by looking at the data we have and returning the complete address, validated and in the correct format.”
Access for All
Widening the access and participation of underrepresented parts of society to enrol in higher education is a key focus of the Office for Students (OfS) for the next 6 years. To measure and achieve this, the OfS is taking an explicitly data-driven approach to the monitoring of institutional performance in this area.
If an HE provider wishes to charge above the basic tuition fee cap, they are required to have an “approved access and participation plan” for students from minority groups, areas of lower Higher Education participation, lower household income and/or lower socioeconomic status groups.
Jackie continued: “We have used AFD’s data controls for ten years now and have enjoyed a good working relationship. Recently, AFD implemented the inclusion of the OfS POLAR (Participation of Local Areas) data in AFD’s Refiner product, allowing us to automatically append this important data in a batch process. Since this data shows how likely young people are to participate in higher education according to where they live, we are then able to target specific areas with marketing efforts in a bid to meet targets for widening participation and essential funding.”
Influencing the future
“Graduate Outcomes” is a recently introduced annual survey conducted by HESA, capturing the opinions and current employment situation of students 15 months after graduation. The objective of the survey is to provide insight to current and potential students into career paths and development, give feedback on courses and institutions, and help shape the future of the Higher Education sector.
Key to the completion of the survey is its successful delivery to the intended recipient. The challenge rests with each Higher Education institution to hold accurate contact data of their alumni.
HESA confirms that each institution is required to collect graduates’ personal contact details; this could be during final year re-enrolment or during the final teaching weeks of students. it is a requirement for the details to be “robust, accurate and comprehensive” and it is recommended that point of collection validation is in place for when details are entered and updated on the student record, and that alumni contact details are thoroughly cleansed prior to submission to HESA.
Email and telephone validation from AFD further help meet this requirement and achieve the target of “robust, accurate and comprehensive” contact data.
What’s the catch?
One of the biggest perceived obstacles in implementing new software is the time involved and integration barriers. Andy Ross, Service Delivery Manager at the University of Dundee, commented: “Upgrading to AFD Software within our student management information system took only a couple of hours. It just worked straight away!
We use AFD’s point-of-entry address validation – both online and in the admissions office – speeding up data entry and validating the addresses entered against the Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File.
Having the ability for both staff and students to search by address fragment as well as the standard first-line plus postcode is especially useful for students who may have recently moved – for example, first years or graduates – and who may only partially know their full, correct address.”
For over 38 years, AFD Software has specialised in helping ensure data is consistent and accurate in thousands of organisations across multiple sectors, including Higher and Further Education.
Find out more on our Education Sector page
2019 marked the 60th Anniversary of the Postcode in the UK.
We enter our Postcode almost daily for online shopping, confirming identity, checking the traffic home, planning journeys for the following day etc. In fact, a recent survey by the Royal Mail showed some people are more likely to know their Postcode than remember birthdays and key anniversaries! But how well do we know the history of the Postcode?
As mail volumes began to increase during the 1850s, it became clear that a comprehensive addressing solution would be required. Initially, this simply meant splitting London into postal districts, based on the points of the compass and each controlled by a separate head office. Many of these London postal districts are still in use today, e.g. SE, NW. The system was later extended to other large towns and cities, however, it wasn’t until 1959 that the then Postmaster General, Ernest Marples, trialled a fuller postal code of the type we know today – in Norwich.
Postcode Address File and Updates
In the early 1980s, the Postcode Address File (PAF) was created, containing all the UK’s business and residential addresses. Data was captured electronically, but maintaining the file with updates was paper-based and slow.
Today PAF is a fully integrated, digital maintenance system that is capable of being updated in real time. It now receives 1,400 updates a day, or over half a million per year, ensuring that it is always the UK’s most accurate and up-to-date addressing database; comprising over 30 million deliverable UK addresses across 1.8 million postcodes.
Unique partnership
Following a careful selection process almost a decade ago, AFD was chosen by Royal Mail to check, process and distribute the primary PAF data to all users of “raw” PAF. This is the data on which over 40,000 organisations rely and is regularly accessed by millions of people daily around the world.
With AFD’s Address Management team together having over 450 years of collective PAF experience, no-one knows the Royal Mail PAF as well as the team at AFD. This knowledge and experience help the thousands of organisations we directly serve to overcome their address data challenges – with the most comprehensive and up to date sources of data. AFD Software is the best option to solve your address data challenges.
Jul. 07, 1959 – “The Postmaster General, Mr. Ernest Marples, this afternoon visited Norwich to inspect the sorting office where eight electronic sorting machines (Elsie) have been installed. He also announced that everyone in and around Norwich is to be given a postal code and asked to use it as the last line of their postal address. This will apply to residents, firms and business houses alike – in fact everyone whose present address includes the words “Norwich, Norfolk”. He said the people of Norwich will be the first in the world to use postal codes in this way. The object is to open the way for the automatic sorting of letters. Photo shows Mr. Ernest Marples feeding letters into one of the electronic sorting machines at Norwich today. Each of the machines costs about £15,000 and sorts 3,000 letters an hour.”
House plants have recently seen huge growth in popularity as people have switched on to the benefits they bring.
Bringing the Outdoors In
With living costs increasing and living space decreasing, plants add both colour and life to indoor spaces. Houseplants offer more than just visual appeal, they also offer a wealth of benefits to our wellbeing. The boffins in the science community have concluded that plants lower levels of stress and reduce anxiety. Recent studies by NASA have shown house plants naturally purify air from harmful toxins.
Verdure House Plants, an online business in West Yorkshire, recently shared an issue they had around finding a customer’s address; Google Maps had been the go-to solution until its shortcomings began to cost the business.
The True Cost of “Free” Solutions
A customer provided the delivery address as “5a Fulstone Holmfirth HD9”, a delivery slot had been selected and payment had been made.
This was entered into Google maps which returned directions to 5 Fulstone Road, Huddersfield, HD4 6YD – an address not in Holmfirth.
Using different search parameters of “Fulstone, Holmfirth, HD9” showed a road called “Fulstone Hall Lane” which had a number 5, and as the customer could not be reached to clarify the address, a quick decision was made that this was the closest address match to the information provided.
When the courier arrived at the location the app had guided him to, the only property at that location was a farm – no numbered houses.
Time and money have been wasted, the delivery abandoned and the customer’s expectations were not met.
Call on the Experts
Where was the delivery address? Could AFD have solved the problem from the information provided?
Entering “5a Fulstone Holmfirth HD9” into Postcode Plus, AFD’s property level validation solution instantly found the address:
5a Fulstone
New Mill
HOLMFIRTH
HD9 7DL
AFD can provide latitude and longitude coordinates at the property level, showing a pinpoint location of an address. Using the same mapping tool that the driver was being guided by, a search of the property’s geo code found the precise location.
Point of entry address validation would have solved the address issue immediately, and identifying the property with latitude and longitude would have given the accurate delivery location of the address.
This is one example of the cost of error for an organisation not using AFD Software’s address validation solutions.
When this issue is scaled to an organisation making thousands of deliveries a day, the cost of error increases and brand perception plummets.
As the largest conservation charity in the country, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is instrumental in ensuring the protection of wildlife and the countryside. Numerous examples of safeguarding species at risk of extinction by the RSPB include Ospreys, Red Kites and the Whitetailed Eagle.
The Bird is on the Wing
In the early 1900’s Red Kites were extinct in most of the UK with a low number isolated to Wales. The remaining birds were carefully protected and slowly began to increase in number following the Second World War. In 1989 a plan to reintroduce the birds was established to ensure the species’ survival in Scotland, England and Wales. By 2003 Wales had in excess of 400 pairs and Red Kites can now be seen majestically hunting around Snowdon by the thousands of tourists attracted there each year. Scotland and England now have a sustainable population and the reintroduction programme successfully saved the species. AFD’s Bradford-based team even report seeing them flying around Leeds! This is just one example of the many vital projects undertaken by the RSPB.
Since its inception 130 years ago, the society has grown to over a million members, whose regular donations support the RSPB’s vital work in “giving nature a home”. It’s therefore essential that there are no barriers to members wanting to join and donate. AFD Software has provided bank validation software to the RSPB for the past 17 years. One of our team (an RSPB member himself!) caught up with the organisation to discover the importance of bank data accuracy during the signup process of new members.
“We use AFD’s BankFinder solution online as part of the new member onboarding process,” says Melissa Werry, Application Development & Support Manager.
“We have to ensure that our systems are not a cause of failure when an individual is completing a membership application. To facilitate this, our systems have been designed to make that initial joining experience as smooth and pain-free as possible.”
In describing how the software prevents inaccurate payment details being entered, Hilary Mackenzie, Manager within the Supporter Data Management Unit continues: “When bank details are entered incorrectly or the account being used does not allow direct debits, a popup message appears notifying the prospective supporter that the entered combination of sort code and account number is invalid. Introducing an error is very easy to do, especially when reading an account number and sort code from a card and typing them in.
Although it may be awkward initially when a potential member is alerted that their bank details are invalid, they are able to resolve the issue instantly as opposed to failing the signup process, receiving an email or a follow-up call and being told there is an issue with their direct debit.
There are a number of reasons people drop out of the sign-up process which we monitor; luckily the bank validation software ensures payment details are not one of them.”
Thirty Eight years in business is quite a journey – from a loft in a 2-bed semi to a business that now employs over a hundred people in several countries. As we reflect on that journey, perhaps the most exciting thing is that the business has been able to make a real and substantial difference to many people in many places.
It is great to produce products and services that are themselves highly positive – they help people and organisations to do things efficiently, and cut out massive amounts of waste. We are always grateful for the incredible loyalty of our many customers – and genuinely strive to make sure they remain happy and well served.
We have also travelled this road with colleagues, many of whom themselves have been around AFD for over ten – or in several cases over twenty – years, and who own and display our culture and values. Seeing them flourish and grow also affirms company objectives.
Sharing all the resources available to us – not only through charity giving, but in the wonderful location and facilities of Mountain View, and by using our influence and voice – help fulfil our strategy to make a positive impact in our community and the wider world: direct expressions of our Christian convictions and calling, which was why AFD was started in that loft in 1983.
Thank you for your support.
AFD’s suppression service gives organisations even more accuracy in their data by removing or updating out-of-date contact data. Records are suppressed if the contact has deceased, or moved and not provided a forward address. If a forwarding address has been supplied by the contact, the record is updated with the most recent address available.
Using AFD’s service to suppress out of-date data in your database helps organisations to avoid mistakes like upsetting relatives of recently deceased individuals, ensures communications go to the right place and contact, reduces wasted mailing costs, and provides further compliance with the latest GDPR regulations.
Deceased
Gathering information on deceased individuals is rather complicated – and there are no fewer than seven different approaches to this in the UK. AFD’s suppression service gets the best possible detection rate by having access to all seven deceased files within the market!
Forwarding Address
Similarly, four different Forwarding Address data sets are combined and used – allowing for the highest accuracy match of the most recent address for any individual within your contact database.
Goneaways
When a contact within your database has moved house and there is no forwarding address, the record can be suppressed – or flagged for manual research in case maintaining contact is vital to you. AFD’s service has access to eight separate mover files with which to compare your data.
Upgrading to accuracy
Leger Holidays had reservations about their previous supplier of data suppressions and sought an alternative. We sat down with Liam Race, Commercial Manager to ask what drove him to upgrade to AFD; “In testing results from AFD’s service, we found the number of records suppressed was five times more than our incumbent supplier. Initially, the results seemed too good to be true so we spent a week manually checking each suppression – and were staggered by the accuracy!
Each year we send over one million brochures to our customer base so accuracy is essential. Prior to upgrading to AFD, we were burning through money, sending brochures to people that we either had poor data for, had moved, or had died.
This has been minimised since the introduction of AFD’s address validation, cleansing and data suppressions solutions. I’d highly recommend using AFD to achieve better accuracy, higher levels of suppression and regaining trust in your data”
In early December 2018, AFD Software hosted its annual charity evening at Babbage’s, the events venue located at Mountain View Innovation Centre in the Isle of Man.
The event celebrated our nominations (from AFD Directors and staff) for donations totalling well over £500,000 to over sixty charities throughout 2018. Representatives from many of the charities and other invited guests from business and the community shared an evening with all AFD staff to celebrate the incredible work the charities undertake, and to understand more about how the donations will further their work.
Our staff and many guests describe the evening as the “highlight of their year” and came away with renewed motivation to do more. Guests were able to hear exciting stories of how music can be life-changing for individuals and entire families – and how you are never too young to make a massive difference.
One of the charities, Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) shared how the Kodiak Bush Aircraft (donated by AFD in 2008) was recently deployed from its usual base in Borneo to Sulawesi, assisting in the emergency disaster relief effort following the earthquake and tsunami that caused devastation to the communities in the area.
The Kodiak was able to transport personnel with skills and experience in disaster relief, in addition to specialised communication tools which allowed the coordination and prioritisation of humanitarian assistance to the worst-hit areas.
All the charities nominated and the essential work being carried out by them can be seen at here.
Do you trust the accuracy of your data? For over 38 years, AFD Software has helped organisations get their data right and ensure the answer to this question is “yes”! AFD’s solutions can help clean up data already held within your databases – then ensure data accuracy continues to be achieved at the point of entry.
AFD Refiner
Refiner automates the process of comparing your address data to the 31 million address records in the Royal Mail Postcode Address File. It helps correct all sorts of errors, makes sure your data is correctly formatted, highlights possible duplicates in your data – and can even add very useful and valuable additional data – such as AFD’s Censation classifications, grid references or even TV region, allowing for analysis and visualisation of your data.
Cleaning up existing Address data is highly challenging, and needs to be done carefully and professionally but whatever the state of your contact database, Refiner will offer the best automatic match where possible, and highlight those records that need manual intervention. Accuracy of contact address data within your database provides a host of tangible benefits, ensuring communications are delivered to a valid address – cutting wasted postage costs, and complying with GDPR requirements, thereby increasing customer perception and service, and brand reputation.
Refiner in action at Northumbria University
Testifying to how Refiner saves time and radically improves accuracy, Ben McWhinnie, Data Manager at the University of Northumbria says; “Without Refiner, we would be relying on our sources of data being perfect. Many of our students’ data comes from UCAS and the address data comes in a mess – containing both mistakes and formatting errors. We can’t change how it comes to us so we have to accept it. Refiner saves a lot of manual intervention by highlighting errors in these addresses.”
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.