Maintaining excellence in accuracy for customers
A lot has changed since Corney & Barrow began trading as independent Wine Merchants 230 years ago. Now with a global marketplace and multiple ways to communicate, how have they managed to retain their identity and continue to deliver excellence to their customers?
Offering a combination of high quality, honestly-priced wines, Corney & Barrow aim to work as closely as they can with both suppliers and customers to create relationships that are individual, personal and made to last. They have built a range of unique products that are delivered direct to customers without the need for middle-men.
Creating relationships with suppliers and customers depends on trust. Customer referrals are key to Corney & Barrow as they do not advertise! Eighty percent of all sales take place over the phone and this is intentional. They want to talk to their customers and build strong relationships.
While maintaining their strong relationship-focused ethos, Corney & Barrow have made full use of the latest technology available. During a planned upgrade to a new enterprise resource planning system, Corney & Barrow identified the need for address validation.
The brief
Tariq Malik, Group Head of IT, oversaw the upgrade to the new system. We spoke with him to find out the functionality that was required and why.
“Firstly, we wanted to establish that we had accurate contact data for the 15,000+ customers on our database, to ensure that contact could be maintained and that we were building our system on a solid data foundation – essential to maintaining strong relationships.
Second on our list of requirements was ensuring that all new data being entered – whether by our staff taking calls or web customers – was correct at the point of entry.
With expansion into the Asian market a current focus, we also needed the functionality to validate international addresses.”
Having these tight data controls in place would ensure that Corney & Barrow continued to maximise their relationships with customers and exceed already high expectations.
Implementing data controls
During the data migration to the new system, AFD Refiner was used. Tariq says, “After a demonstration by Jonathan Stocks, one of AFD Software’s Data Quality Consultants, we purchased AFD Refiner due to its ease of use, simplicity and good results.”
To ensure only accurate contact data enters the system, AFD Postcode Plus was deployed at the point of entry, delivering address validation of the customer’s address at letterbox level.
Discussing the implementation of Postcode Plus Tariq says: “To meet our requirements, we needed a solution that would be autonomous and require no further IT resources once implemented. Our chosen solution would have to provide automatic updates to the data and be fully managed – AFD Software understood our requirements and delivered.”
To validate international addresses ensuring only accurate data enters the system would require specialist knowledge of international address formats: AFD WorldAddress has this knowledge.
Tariq goes on to say “Having introduced address data validation, we didn’t want our expansion plans to allow inaccurate or wrongly formatted international addresses onto our system. AFD’s WorldAddress product instantly solved this issue too.”
In December 2015, AFD software held its annual charity event which celebrated staff-nominated donations to well over seventy charities, with donations totalling over £750,000.
These donations go to support a wide range of local, UK and international charities, including those involved in medical care and research, disaster relief, youth work and work amongst those with disabilities.
Some of the 70+ charities nominated by staff members at AFD Software included:
Hope for Justice – Millions of men, women and children are trapped in slavery in the world today. Through their programmes Hope for Justice secure freedom, uphold justice and restore lives.
Ben Cooley, CEO at Hope for Justice, delivered a powerful presentation highlighting the incredible work the charity is doing at home in Britain and around the world, and the lives they are changing. AFD’s donation will help them continue to change more lives.
Since its founding in 1982, Operation Smile has provided more than 240,000 free life transforming surgical procedures for children and young adults born with cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities.
Funding from AFD will help put the smile back on these children’s faces. Paul Laudiangco, Graphic Designer at AFD, and designer of Postcode News, nominated the charity and said: “I’m a big supporter of Operation Smile because it makes such a positive impact on the children who undergo surgery.”
To view the full list of the charities we supported and their contact details, please click here.
Established in 2001, MTA Solicitors LLP is a nationwide law practice with solicitors in London, Bromley, Manchester and Cambridge and the ability to represent commercial and private clients from anywhere in England and Wales.
Multi-skilled and technologically advanced, MTA helps thousands of clients a year make successful personal injury compensation claims, win employment tribunals, settle commercial and private debt disputes, create long-standing wills and trusts, and successfully litigate across a wide spectrum of the law.
David Reeves has been at the organisation for the last thirteen years. David started as a Personal Injury Team Manager before taking on the role of Head of Systems Development – a role he has been in for the past 12 years.
Power of Hindsight
MTA are always looking to stay ahead of their competition when it comes to technology: constantly seeking ways to utilise innovative solutions and therefore guaranteeing the customer’s journey is always improving.
All IT systems are controlled in-house which gives MTA complete control and allows a tailored experience to the benefit of both customers and staff.
In discussing technology at MTA David says “We wanted to implement a new Case Management System – and having address validation integrated into it was in the top 3 requests from management.
We took the opportunity to have the quality of our address data analysed using AFD Software’s Address Healthcheck Service. We were disappointed at the poor state of our address book and the results highlighted the need to put into place a method of validating addresses.
If we could go back and implement tighter controls at initial data entry we would have done – hindsight is a wonderful thing! Nevertheless, the results from the Address Healthcheck allowed us to correct a lot of the erroneous data that we had in the database – though this was much harder work than it would have been getting it right from the start.”
Having remedied the past, David and his team turned their attention to how they could eliminate the entry of incorrect address data going forward. Having been introduced to AFD Software through their partner Lexis Nexis, Postcode Plus was selected as the solution that could deliver the high-quality address data that they needed. Integration of Postcode Plus was seamless, saving both development time and integration cost.
The Customer Journey
Call centres are renowned for being a fast turnover environment. Speed, accuracy, customer satisfaction are all challenges – how does MTA ensure success?
Andrew Gray, MTA’s Call Centre Team Manager, highlights the benefits that AFD Postcode Plus introduces into their Call Centre. “We need to guarantee the customer’s journey is as smooth as possible. Often customers have already spoken to their motor insurers, garages, etc., repeating information each time.
Spelling errors and address formatting errors are taken out of the equation. Call Centre staff are able to build better rapport with clients and get straight towards a solution. It is very difficult having a customer spell ‘L-l-a-n-f-a-i-r-f-e-c-h-a-n’ or constantly being asked to repeat a line of their address. Our team enters the postcode and then immediately begins helping the client.”
Tangible Benefits
Whilst all these benefits are essential, we asked David what is the biggest tangible benefit to MTA Solicitors?
“For us, the biggest driver was the time saved by not having to key in data manually. On average we would make between 4 and 7 address checks on any new case, taking between 2 and 3 minutes to enter all the address data per case. On average we receive 2000 cases per month. That translates to a saving of between 4,000 and 6,000 minutes, 66 and 100 hours each month!”
Postcode Plus is deployed using AFD’s “Installed Evolution Service” giving the resilience of an installed solution with virtually zero maintenance and automatic data updates. David says “Having up-to-date address data is essential as we rely on it for service documents. In this sector, we simply cannot get addresses wrong.”
MTA Solicitors are investing in their IT systems to stay ahead of the competition and ensure their customer interaction is as efficient as possible. They have managed to accomplish this whilst saving valuable staff time and ensuring contact data in their database is accurate.
AFD Software has over 38 years of experience in providing Name, Address and Bank validation software – currently helping over 6,000 organisations regain control of their data.
In 2015, AFD Software relocated to the Mountain View Innovation Centre (MVIC). The £3 million investment delivered spacious office accommodation, recreational and social facilities.
MVIC provides unparalleled levels of internet connectivity and redundancy, ensuring we are always able to serve our customers with innovative products and excellent technical support.
Our new address:
AFD Software Ltd
Mountain View Innovation Centre
Jurby Road
Lezayre, Ramsey
ISLE OF MAN
IM7 2DZ
Change for Good
Making a change to improve existing systems can be difficult and may seem risky. Will current functionality be maintained? What costs will be incurred? Will improvements actually be made? When it comes to Name, Address and Bank data validation, hundreds of organisations are switching to AFD Software. StepChange Debt Charity, the UK’s leading debt charity who have been helping people deal with problem debt for 20 years, is one. Here is their story, could it be yours?
Free from Debt, Free from Inaccuracy
Operating from ten locations across the UK, StepChange Debt Charity helps thousands of people every week overcome serious debt problems. As a charity it is not driven by the need for profit or by shareholder pressure. This means its advisors are able to offer expert tailored advice and practical solutions, genuinely in the best interests of clients. During his 18 years at StepChange Debt Charity, implementing and developing IT systems, John Patterson has seen significant growth. When he started with the charity, then named Consumer Credit Counselling Service it had 60 employees. Now, as StepChange Debt Charity, there are 1200 employees and John is Infrastructure Manager. Growth inevitably involves change. We met with John high above Leeds, in the charity’s city centre Head Office. We asked him about the data challenges he has experienced during rapid growth – and how AFD Software and Services are helping
The Importance of certainty
“The effectiveness of our processes and systems rely on the entry of accurate data. This can be quite a challenge but it is vital, especially in connection with address data. 60% of potential clients call us and typically we receive 1,500 – 2,000 calls per day. Of these, 40% become clients and are supported in dealing with their debts through a personal Debt Management Plan. There are many reasons address data must be right for the Debt Management Plan to work effectively:
Precise contact data
For each of these reasons StepChange Debt Charity decided to incorporate the unique fast find functions within AFD Postcode Plus – across its multiple systems. Even the most difficult or incomplete address information offered by clients is now quickly resolved to a single accurate address. This results in high levels of service to clients and creditors.
Simple maintenance, lower costs
John continued: “AFD assigned a Data Quality Consultant who worked with us throughout the process of changing from our existing address validation system to AFD Postcode Plus. He helped us fully explore and clarify our needs across all three internal systems. The proof of concept was complete in just two days. We now enjoy:
Refreshing Change
John concluded: “We hadn’t realised just how easy AFD Software had made it for us to change to Postcode Plus. The savings and new levels of simplicity are refreshing.”
Wincanton stores and moves things around the country, sometimes further. When you put milk on cereal, install a kitchen, put powder in a washing machine, fuel in the car or receive goods ordered online from a major retailer – it’s possible that Wincanton has been involved in making it happen. Dairy Crest, Magnet, P&G and M&S are among their customers.
Wincanton leverages technology to go beyond the delivery of goods. For example customers are under pressure not to hold too much stock, and rely on Wincanton for ‘Just in Time’ delivery. Wincanton also supports their customers in fulfilling their ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) by making transport as ‘green and lean’ as possible. Technology enables Wincanton to help their customers reach these important and stretching financial and environmental goals. Wincanton has a dedicated Transport and Fulfilment Competency Centre and Phil Saxby is the Service, Deployment and Vendor Manager.
Phil describes issues that especially affect the Home Delivery operations: “There are two key areas where we can save our customers time and money. The first is to optimise the order in which deliveries are made, and the second is minimising failed deliveries. Both are vital to efficiency in time and money and to minimising emissions – and both rely on absolutely accurate delivery address details.
The analysis of delivery data we receive shows a 10%-30% error rate in home delivery addresses (depending on the situation). It’s vital to the major brands we serve that these errors do not translate into failed or delayed deliveries.”
To achieve 100% accuracy in fulfilment, all delivery addresses – including those received as bulk batch orders as well as those received as real-time web site orders – are validated using AFD Postcode Plus.
Any that cannot be validated are flagged back through the fulfilment system offering the selection of the nearest match. Where necessary a direct contact with the intended recipient is made to clarify the precise delivery details – again using Postcode Plus.
Phil continues: “I describe Postcode Plus reliability as absolutely bullet-proof. Data updates are easy, the available charging models suit the wide variety of uses we have now, and those that we anticipate. AFD Software is an easy vendor to work with and the software is a little gem that sits there, does what it should do and we never have any issues.
As we develop new multi-channel, multi-tenancy solutions we are ensuring that Postcode Plus remains at the heart of the address accuracy on which Wincanton and its customers rely.”
Multi-Channel: Making it Work
The Damartex UK HQ sits alongside the Leeds & Liverpool Canal next to the famous Bingley Five Rise Staircase Locks. Damart UK is a major mail-order firm with a £100M+ annual turnover. Based in Yorkshire, you’d expect down-to-earth plain-speaking – along with a high degree of warmth. That’s exactly what we got as we asked Jeanette Askin (Contact Centre Manager) and Ian Auker (Network Communication and Service Delivery Manager) to pass on nuggets about growing a truly multi-channel experience. What could you learn?
Heritage, Territory & Culture
Damart began 60 years ago in France where the Despature brothers patented “Thermolactyl”, a man-made material from which thermal underwear was manufactured. Famous European climbers like the Italian Reinhold Messner, Austrian Peter Habeler and Britain’s Chris Bonnington used and endorsed the clothing as they conquered Everest.
The French-owned business has come a long way since then, with distinct bases in Belgium, UK and France now focussed on thermal clothing and ladies’ ready-to-wear. Each territory has its own history and development story. Belgium is retail-based with 56 stores, UK is 100% mail-order based with over 1.8 million active customers, and France is a mixture of stores and mail-order.
Customer Channel Preference
“Ten years ago we believed there would be a transition to online retail. The fact is that although we do deliver a multi-channel experience this transition did not happen at the rate we expected. Today the proportion of phone orders has risen to 40%, orders by post 51% and with just 9% of orders placed online or via email!” explains Ian. Jeanette continues: “What determines the customer channel choice is not easy to prove, but we think the channel choices are driven by factors such as the increased cost of postage and the enjoyment of speaking to a real person. The profile of our traditional customers is senior – and that is another factor in channel choice.”
High Growth Export Market
Jeanette thinks that retaining and growing UK contact centre skills has put in place a strong foundation for growth in the USA: “We are leveraging those skills and our US customers love the warm Yorkshire accents of our colleagues. We now run shifts until 4am UK time to serve customers on the cold US East Coast. When 6’4” of snow lands in a single day – you can imagine that the desire for our Thermolactyl products rises!” “The contact centre receives 10,000 calls per day and 10,000 mail orders per day and during peak periods this doubles. Our colleagues do not have a working knowledge of US addresses and AFD WorldAddress has empowered them to find accurate addresses quickly from a ZipCode and street or property details.”
Multichannel Data Challenges
Demand at Damart is driven by a wide variety of marketing activity. Around half of all UK business is placed via mail order and each week 750,000 mail order catalogues are despatched. Together with “off-the-page” advertising in magazines and newspapers this drives orders by mail and phone. The autumn/winter season 7 week, 18 channel TV advertising campaign drove a measurable increase in unique website hits and a surge in telephone catalogue requests. So how do you prevent the duplication of customer records in a multi-channel environment? Jeanette says this is an enormous challenge: “Existing customers may well take up an introductory offer actually aimed at new customer acquisition. At the heart of preventing the duplication of customer records is address validation at every point within the business. We have AFD Postcode Plus deployed in every system – Mail Order Data Entry, Contact Centre and Website. By validating addresses at the point of entry we are able to minimise the creation of duplicate addresses.”
Technical Diversity and Transition
Back to technology, Ian’s concerns are around diverse platforms and safe transition: “We have a UNIX-based version of AFD Postcode Plus for our contact centre and mail order data entry systems, an XML-based web service version of AFD Postcode Plus and WorldAddress for our USA and website systems. AFD Software is on this journey with us, making technical transitions happen reliably.”
The Art of Feeling Good
Damart recently won the UK Customer Satisfaction Award from the Institute of Customer Service. Jeanette explains why: “Our business and culture is orientated toward making the customer experience excellent at every point. AFD Software plays a vital part in making this possible. Part of what makes our customers feel good is about answering calls quickly, minimising data entry time, minimising duplicate records and ensuring the data accuracy that is the foundation for on-time delivery. With AFD Postcode Plus and AFD WorldAddress our colleagues don’t have to be experts in UK and US addresses.”
AFD Mobile Products are proven in the field to speed up data entry on the move by up to 90% and minimise errors.
The results include: better compliance for financial services, more prosecutions in revenue protection, higher donor acquisition rate for charities.
Entering name, address and bank data to smart phones and tablet computers can be slow and error-prone. Poor data affects every subsequent process. Low productivity costs money and causes staff and stakeholder frustration.
Once installed, no network or internet access is needed:
AFD Mobile Products guarantee continued verification, lookup or data capture regardless of connectivity.
Choice
Choose from the names and addresses of 42 million people (c. 14 million with phone numbers), 2 million organisations (1.6 million with phone numbers), full Royal Mail PAF® data (over 30 million letterbox locations), street level address data (1.73 million street addresses), or UK bank data. All at your fingertips – for instant validation, rapid entry and searching.
AFD mobile solutions are available for Android, iOS and Windows Mobile. The powerful Software Developer Kit (SDK) enables developers to put the rich functionality of Names & Numbers, Postcode Plus, Postcode and BankFinder at the heart of mobile applications.
Business Benefits
To find out more visit afd.co.uk/mobile where you can download evaluation software and see more details about the range. Call 01624 811711 and ask to speak to a mobile solutions expert.
Maintaining excellence in accuracy for customers
How does an organisation with its roots in printed newspapers embrace the digital age? One organisation that is leading the way in achieving this is Johnston Publishing. You may not have heard of them, but you will almost certainly have read one of their 200+ newspaper titles and colourful magazines or have visited one of the 196 websites that they operate.
In front, in digital
Jonathan DeVries is the Senior Group Commercial Applications Architect and he explains how a complex organisation employing over 3,800 people is achieving a single customer view – with AFD Postcode Plus at the heart of address data integrity.
The Multi-Channel Relationship
“Individuals have all sorts of reasons to interact with our organisation – a person may call us to place a birth announcement in a local newspaper, and then go online to visit one of our job sites and then take a subscription to one of our newspapers. The same person may run a business and sponsor a supplement or place a job advert on one of our web sites or want to buy a car.
When an individual contacts any part of the business we want to have a complete 360 degree view of all the different ways they interact with us. This enables us to be more personal, more professional and more relevant. We understand the significance of each person and their preferences and can make intelligent and timely offers.
AFD Software with *Salesforce
We use AFD Postcode Plus and Names & Numbers within other applications across the business so we were delighted that we could use the Salesforce App Exchange package that is available for AFD products. We had a good experience, the package is easy to install and configure – a seamless process. Maintenance is minimal and when we have needed support we have had a personal contact at AFD Software that is professional, responsive and competent. We have plans to use the geodemographic and business data available within AFD solutions to bring even greater insight. In short, using AFD Postcode Plus with Salesforce is helping us to become more efficient and get the high quality data that is central to our future success.
All this rests on our bringing data from many disparate systems together in one place. Johnston Publishing has grown through merger and acquisition and has nine different publishing units each with their own database. On top of that, the growth of multiple communication channels and product offerings present a major challenge – but one that is central to confident decision making and growth. We had to achieve the result.
Last year we decided to implement Salesforce to make details about each customer, organisation or individual visible to our staff. Perhaps even more important we achieved a new level of business intelligence delivering greater clarity, and informing strategic and tactical decisions
Physical Addresses in a Digital World
It is absolutely critical in any business to have an accurate address for each customer. In a business to business context it is vital from a legal and financial perspective. In a residential context not only does it enable us to deliver to the door – it also enables us to look at interactions at an individual, household, postcode, street and area level. It is the bedrock for analysis, planning and insight.
Complete But Not Duplicated!
To get a single view you need to drive out and then prevent the creation of duplicate records – a perennial problem! A key to achieving this is a full, accurate address record.
We measure staff on the completeness of the data they enter. Anything we can do that makes it faster and more accurate to enter data saves on staff time, makes us more responsive, minimises operational errors and makes our operation more efficient.”
Imagine a rapid, accurate address entry solution that needs no integration to work with any Windows application – yet it works seamlessly. Just type the postcode or partial address into the program and the address appears.
That is what AFD Software’s patented Robot® is proven to deliver in the workplace every day by many thousands of users.
No Developers Needed?!
AFD Software Technical Manager Chris Edge-Alexander explains: “There is no need to wait for development resources to integrate. With Robot, AFD solutions work seamlessly with a multitude of applications.”
When people first hear about this they are often incredulous. It sounds impossible. In these cases the simplest thing to do is to prove it by installing it.
What do customers say?
“What I like is that AFD’s Robot works independently of the database. It runs automatically with all the systems and software packages our staff use each day. From an old but essential Patient Administration System (which would be hard to integrate with), to the systems we use in Accident & Emergency and Audiology – right through to Microsoft Office.
In the past we have had two different address validation solutions. One didn’t work at all and the other required users to start a separate program, look up an address and then insert it into our system.
What our staff like is that with AFD Robot they can type a postcode or partial address into any software application and the address will appear in the right place and in the right format. It makes their life easier, not harder – so they use it. We get accurate address data which improves the service we are offering to the patients in our care, and best of all we have achieved this without incurring any integration costs.”
Frank McIntyre – Application Manager at Warrington & Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
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.