Did you know that some of the nation’s favourite retailers and largest logistics firms such as AO, Ikea, and DPD rely on AFD Software? Each day, millions of delivery addresses pass through our highly sophisticated routines for automated validation and correction.
The powerful AFD logic transforms sometimes poor delivery addresses into precise locations even as parcels make their way late at night in large container trucks to central distribution hubs. The processes are lightning fast, reliable, and accurate – resulting in precision scheduling, logical routing, and on-time delivery of goods.
It’s not unusual for customers to be out or for addresses to have obscure entrances. Delivery instructions such as “leave in shed” or “behind the garage” or “access to Daisy Lea Lane from the Halifax Road direction” all help – but can be confusing.
Now, AFD is offering an add-on option to its address validation solutions so that the shed, garage, or entrance location can be precisely geocoded. The add-on data is called what3words and enables any 3-metre grid, anywhere on earth to be identified with a unique combination of 3 words, for example; ///impose.title.pulse.
A customer wanting to select a specific delivery spot that is not their front door, or help the driver identify a hard-to-find property entrance, types in the what3words location and AFD lists the closest property level addresses– for the user to select the correct one. This enables AFD to take the driver to the right address with the additional benefit of the precise geographic co-ordinates for the obscure entrance, shed or garage.
The driver no longer has to hunt for the exact delivery location and the customer no longer has to hunt for the goods. With multi-drop deliveries, every efficiency makes a difference and for retailers, greater customer satisfaction builds reputation and repeat business.
“Working with AFD on our partnership has been
incredibly easy. The team had a clear understanding of the technical
requirements and were able to roll out the integration incredibly quickly –
always responding to our questions and acting on our feedback as soon as
possible. So now with what3words and AFD, you can be sure to get the most
precise and accurate address” – Phoebe Parry-Crooke, Partnerships
Lead
To purchase this add-on for your CRM system or website, contact the team at AFD Software today at 01624 811711 or email postcode@afd.co.uk.
Data On Demand builds accurate, compliant consumer data products and solutions that help organisations improve their understanding of their customers, enabling better consumer outcomes. Organisations from a range of sectors including Utilities, Telecoms, and Insurance rely on Data On Demand’s consumer database, the UK’s largest, to identify, verify, and contact their customers.
Stuart Murgatroyd, CEO of Data On Demand, and his team discovered that less than optimal address data matching was slowing growth in the reach of their database. The initial problem was that their existing address-matching solution was slow and would often stop working. During a thorough analysis of the solution, inaccuracies in the data were discovered, and further investigation uncovered areas where improvements could be made to ensure that the data they provide is best-in-class.
Stuart explains: “Our Chief Technical Officer and Chief Data Officer would set large files running on Friday night only to find on Monday that software problems had stopped the process. The hardest part was trying to get our software supplier to fix things in a timely manner. Often, the phone went unanswered, and responses took weeks. We need to move faster than that.”
It was time to find a new address-cleansing supplier. With decades of experience in the data industry, they knew who the major players were and shortlisted four alternatives – including AFD Software – which were then subject to intensive testing and evaluation.
Stuart continues: “We assessed each of the suppliers’ solutions on a wide range of criteria – we went further than most because address cleansing and matching is critical to our business and to our customers. At the end of the process, it was clear that AFD’s Refiner product was best-in-class across all evaluation criteria – including best value for money. AFD’s solution was the fastest, most accurate, simplest to integrate, and the results were much clearer to interpret than the other options.”
Stuart explains some important findings: “As we are encouraging our clients to work on a real-time basis, we need API-based solutions that can handle multiple requests and files simultaneously. Some solutions just couldn’t accommodate this – only offering legacy batch solutions requiring export, processing, and re-importing of data. Other solutions were complicated to integrate and automate and left us to interpret overly complicated results into action – rather than presenting us with a reliable decision.”
The evaluation process showed that AFD Refiner covered 95% of what was needed. The engagement and desire to look at the final 5% would reveal how committed AFD was to receive and action feedback for enhancements that would bring maximum alignment. Stuart says: “The responsiveness from the team at AFD was completely refreshing and delivered a solution bespoke to our exact requirements.”
Stuart concludes: “We are a highly technical, data specialist organisation with complex requirements. When we say that the AFD Refiner engine is best-in-class, we say so after a thorough comparison and examination of multiple dimensions.
Our previous supplier’s account management was not at the required level. From initial engagement, the team at AFD Software responded the fastest, and developed a relationship of partnership rather than transaction. This continued through testing, our bespoke development requirements, go-live, and ongoing support. If you need address data cleansing – partner with The Postcode People at AFD Software.”
If you would like to discuss your data cleansing requirements or understand the quality of your contact database, contact one of AFD’s Data Quality Consultants to discuss your specific requirements today on 01624 811711 or email postcode@afd.co.uk.
Dr Tim Drye has decades of experience in data and statistics. He sits on the Royal Mail’s PAF Advisory Board and his companies help organisations overcome their data and statistical challenges. He shares his experience with AFD and gives his feedback on the latest solutions available.
Stuart Murgatroyd, CEO, at Data On Demand shares his experience in going out to market and selecting the right supplier to provide address data cleansing.
Their requirements were three fold:
1. A solution that would provide the highest match rates for address data cleansing.
2. The processing speed must be fast.
3. Able to use the solution in a hosted environment.
When you rely on Software as a Service (SaaS) you need confidence that the provider of that service is competent and can prove consistent availability and scalability. With thousands of organisations across the world relying on our services, we are continuously investing in our hosted infrastructure.
So how do we achieve 100% uptime – we’ve had no outages, no partial outages, no degraded performance – in two years? A few basics: stay humble, plan ahead, constantly monitor, keep building team skill and knowledge, implement the very best technologies and practices – invest in the right tools and rigorously test.
What are some of the practices that are delivering outstanding levels of uptime second by second, building to year by year? Our network is optimised so that thousands of simultaneous requests for (say) address validation can be processed with users receiving immediate responses. This is called low latency.
When there are spikes and increases in demand for our services, we are ready to respond instantly with increased capacity. We achieve this by enabling our hosted services to automatically enlarge – which is known as lightweight virtualisation technology. These extra resources are deployed quickly, reliably, and consistently. We also anticipate that faults happen and use additional machines which allow connections to still be made available if another machine fails (“Quorum Nodes”), to improve resiliency and fault tolerance. AFD continues to invest heavily in technologies that deliver maximum speed, reliability, and availability.
While we have maintained a 100% uptime track record for the past two years, we understand that technology can sometimes be unpredictable, and unexpected challenges may arise. Do we want to maintain 100%? Yes! That’s why our quest for excellence is never over – our dedicated teams will continue to use best practice, available technologies and ongoing testing to maintain the highest levels of service. In summary – we care, we invest, we want to be the best. Our goal is simple. Happy Customers.
Does your organisation have absolute confidence in its address, bank, and contact data? AFD Software is on hand to help with all your data quality needs. Contact Joel Miller on 01624 811709 or email joel.miller@afd.co.uk.
Beaverbrooks is a thriving, multichannel retail jewellery business with over 1,200 colleagues and 80 stores nationwide. With more than a century of expertise helping customers find the right diamonds, jewellery and watches, Beaverbrooks have applied the best operational technology to support customer retention and growth in this competitive space. In 2021/2022 Beaverbrooks had their most successful year ever, with over £200 million in turnover.
Head of IT, Patrick Walker, and IT Systems Development Manager, Vicki Olthoff, have 50 years of combined experience implementing and maintaining multi-channel retail systems. They wanted to bring a new level of consistency, automation and reliability to customer and prospect data validation, and after conducting a careful review of their needs and the marketplace, they made the upgrade to AFD Software. We wanted to find out how Patrick and Vicki took the selection decision and understand the immediate and expected business impacts.
Patrick says: “From one company we sought five things: 1. A single source solution covering off fast, accurate, consistent contact data entry across all channels. 2. A reliable service that removed anxiety. 3. A process for complete data cleansing including suppressions which would show the highest levels of diligence in the GDPR data accuracy principle. 4. A combination of the highest percentage of accurate automated data cleansing, combined with the fastest processing rates. 5. To put in a new solution and forget it – because it just works.”
Even with strong commercial, technical, and functional reasons to change their address validation and data cleansing supplier – Beaverbrooks were still keen to minimise risk. Their due diligence on AFD included reference sites, product testing, integration evaluation, assessment of technical skills and evaluation of AFD Software as a company.
Vicki reports: “For the past three years we’ve had AFD Software in action on our web platform for validating and speeding up contact data entered by customers. It is also being used by staff in our stores as part of our bespoke Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) and we’re integrating it into our Order Management System (OMS) and our Customer Data Platform (CDP).”
Thousands of customers place orders each week in Beaverbrooks stores, on the website, by post, by phone and via partners such as Next and Shop Direct. This complex operation is supported by a variety of systems including EPOS, Web, Mail Order, OMS and CDP which work together as a single ecosystem.
Vicki continues: “When customer data is received from so many different channels it is important that the validation sources are from a single, complete, and accurate source. Whatever the channel used, by colleagues or customers, we want a consistent contact data entry experience. This was another key consideration in choosing AFD. When the rollout is complete, all these systems will have a touchpoint back onto the AFD solutions.”
Beyond this, Beaverbrooks is conscious of its GDPR responsibilities and recognise that customer data degrades over time. To help keep contact data accurate Beaverbrooks also switched to AFD Software to provide services to cleanse address data and detect customers who have moved or are now deceased.
Patrick adds: “Because the customer is at the forefront of everything we do, we want that journey, that customer experience, to be the best it can be. AFD is an essential part of delivering minimum friction and maximum accuracy at crucial parts in that journey.
This has tangible impacts across the business. Purchases are more likely, deliveries go to the right place, our communications arrive – the result is happy customers and increased internal efficiency.
One error in an email address makes it undeliverable – and mistakes in data entry are easy in a busy store.
Vicki explains: “Email is an important way to engage with customers and to encourage them to return to our stores. This relies on the accuracy of the email addresses recorded by customers and colleagues. To maximise accuracy, we now use the AFD live email validation service. The instant check enables immediate correction of any mistakes. This ensures our communications are deliverable from the outset.
Increasing deliverability, whether by post or email, means that our communications get to more people who get more opportunities to come into our stores. It’s a real win-win.”
Patrick continues: “AFD is a great fit for us. We have found the Postocde People at AFD’s technical and support skills and responsiveness to be both very helpful and very good. AFD solutions provide real flexibility of implementation from a unified service that works across all our systems and platforms. The options of on-site installation and hosted services build in a high level of resilience and stability. Our experience with AFD compared with others in this space is very positive: the solutions are very good to use, and we get a personal service. In fact, in terms of culture and philosophy and values we’re very similar.”
Vicki concludes: “We’re glad we did the due diligence on AFD Software – they passed the tests – and we are confident we took the right decision for the business – and we are already reaping rewards”.
Does your organisation have absolute confidence in its address, bank, and contact data? AFD Software is on hand to help with all your data quality needs. Contact Joel Miller on 01624 811709 or email joel.miller@afd.co.uk.
Bird College’s Mission is to be an outstanding and innovative international provider of education and professional training in Dance, Music and Musical Theatre.
They partner with AFD Software for address validation, email validation and phone validation to ensure student contact data is valid at the point of entry. Bird College’s Registry Manager says:
“Addresses are important, and so are email addresses, phone numbers and mobile numbers. This applies to both students and next of kin. Emergencies do arise and that is not the time to find out the contact data is wrong!
With AFD, we have one solution that instantly validates email, phone, and address details. Any errors can be immediately corrected before they are saved to our database.
With AFD we have a choice of installed software and data, AFD hosted services – or the availability of both. We chose AFD hosted services because they have 100% uptime, and we no longer have the costs associated with carrying out software maintenance or keeping data up-to-date within our own infrastructure.”
Pictures from Bird College – Conservatoire for Dance and Musical Theatre ©.
Maintaining accurate and up-to-date contact data can feel like a huge mountain to climb.
AFD Software’s range of address, email, phone and bank validation solutions give you a clear view of your data.
Address Validation helps ensure address data entered into your websites, apps, and back-end systems are accurate in real time.
Email Validation uses a 3-point check system confirming the syntax, domain and local part are all correct, helping validate if the email is live and can receive your vital digital comms.
Phone Validation confirms the format and number of digits are correct depending on the country, our solution then pings the number, confirming its live.
Bank Validation confirms the sort code and account number are valid, essential for setting up direct debits and processing payments.
If you came across the address:
No Name Shop
1 No Name Street
Sandwich
CT13 9AJ
You might be forgiven for thinking there is an error and someone has manually filled in fields that were blank.
This is actually a correct address appearing on Royal Mails Postcode Address File (PAF) but highlights the importance of having a solution to check name and address data is correct as its entered into your systems and cleansed prior to mailing.
AFD Software’s address lookup API takes away the guess work and allows organisations to instantly validate name and address data at the point of entry.
See more information and try for yourself here.
Accurate address data is essential for mail to reach the intended recipient. When the contents are private and relating to legal matters, this requirement becomes even more important.
TRUE Solicitors LLP began life over 20 years ago as Gorman Hamilton, based in Newcastle upon Tyne, with just two partners and a secretary. They have combined hard work and success to grow to a workforce now staffed by 170 employees that specialise in the provision of legal advice and support to clients that have suffered due to personal injury.
“We’ve used address validation from AFD Software for nearly 10 years. Having the right address protects all parties by avoiding data breaches or delays that occur if papers go to the wrong address. Address verification provides an independent means of checking that we have not misheard, or mis keyed an address. AFD helps us protect our reputation, reduce risk, and retain clients.” True Solicitors, Dave Johnson, Head of IT.
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.