EMG Solicitors is an award-winning Legal 500 firm based across the North East and Cumbria, with a national client base, specialising in Court of Protection, Deputyships, Family Law, Residential Conveyancing, Commercial Property, Litigation & Disputes, Employment Law and Wills, Trusts & Probate services.
We caught up with Martin Clark, Head of Business Systems and IT, to discuss how accurate address data helps the organisation speed up data entry, ensure data accuracy, and maintain its professional image.
“We use the case management system Liberate by Linetime which holds all our client data and case notes. Linetime recommended AFD’s address lookup solution to help us quickly and accurately enter client address data into the system from a postcode or first line of an address.
Prior to the introduction of AFD, staff typing in an address would consume more time and we lacked standardisation of address data. Some of the errors that I recall included town and city sometimes being all capitalised, sometimes the first letter capitalised, and other times all lowercase. We had Durham rather than County Durham, transposition of characters and address lines – all the expected errors where manual data entry and human error are allowed.
The main driver in stopping this and having accurate address data is staff time and reputation.
Staff time is reduced by simply typing in a postcode and selecting an address, saving potentially 25 seconds per address. This might sound minimal but when we search 20,000 addresses per year this is almost 140 hours a year!
Clients are paying for a professional service, if we are sending letters out and the address data is wrong this doesn’t reflect well. There is also a chance the address data is completely wrong and goes to the wrong person, a situation we must avoid.”
As EMG Solicitors provide conveyancing services (legal services of purchasing a property) they required the enhanced datasets within AFD’s address validation solution that shows new build properties or properties still under construction. Martin continues: “Standard address data on the Postcode Address File (PAF) doesn’t have the new build properties whilst still under construction or just completed. We need to find and validate these properties when our clients wish to purchase them. AFD showed us the Not Yet Built datasets from Royal Mail that include these properties and help us maintain an accurate address for a client’s new property from first enquiry through to completion.”
Summarising the address verification solution from AFD, Martin concludes: “Not a single person has come back to me saying ‘this doesn’t work, I can’t find the address’. The solution solves the challenge we had by speeding up data entry and making sure the address entered is accurate. I’d happily recommend the Postcode People at AFD Software for any organisations needing a fast, accurate addressing solution.”
When you look on an issue from the outside the new perspective can make issues and their possible solutions clearer. While at University I worked as a retail sector shift-manager for a busy multinational restaurant chain.
To measure satisfaction, all customers were asked to complete an online survey in the restaurant prior to leaving. Many would abandon the task – saying it took too long. During a week the restaurant would serve around 900 customers. About 30 surveys would be completed each week, detailing what was good and bad about the customer’s experience – just 3%. If the completion rate could have been raised even to 10% that would have been 90 customers with feedback that could have better shaped the organisation.
Having made the switch from working in retail to computer software, I have gained a real understanding of how process can be key to successfully achieving objectives and desirable outcomes. Customers complained that the survey was time-consuming, especially from a smart phone. The most time-consuming part of the process was entering the address – yet that was essential for analysis of drive-time and demographic profiling. I can now see that there were just three necessary steps:
Having a survey system in place that was intuitive, fast, and accurate would have led to a higher percentage of completed surveys. Each one would bring more insight into how the business could improve, provide customers with specific offers and redeemable vouchers, and fill the restaurant during quiet times. Accurate contact data powered by AFD Software would have ensured the customer would have received their rewards and would have increased levels of customer satisfaction and growth for the restaurant.
AFD Software has been helping organisations in the retail sector streamline their address capture processes for the last 40 years. Thousands of organisations directly benefit from AFD Software’s address management solutions in a variety of environments. How could your organisation benefit? One of our Data Quality Consultants can help you identify how today! Call Joel Miller on 01624 811711 or Email joel.miller@afd.co.uk
How do you get to a place of confidence about your address data? Sintons have been on the journey. This is their story.
Sintons is a leading full-service law firm based in the Northeast of England serving businesses, individuals, and organisations in the region and beyond. With a turnover of £16 million, Sintons has 130 employees including over 70 lawyers and is utilising AFD Software solutions as part of a fundamental change to data management. How are they doing this?
David Mather, IT Manager at Sintons, really likes the way that AFD’s Address Lookup solution enables them to achieve so much at once: “We communicate daily with insurance companies and other law firms. The inclusion of DX Network member address details makes it easy for us to reduce postage costs and because DX deliver before 9 and collect after 5, the working day is extended – enhancing our response times to clients.” Difficult addresses, regional accents, poor handwriting – the things that lead to inaccuracy – are easily and quickly resolved with the powerful search functions of AFD’s Address Validation solutions… and these are fully integrated into the applications used intensively by our staff… the win is less staff time, better data and therefore service assurance.” “We previously had to conduct data updates out of work hours and reboot the server. With AFD’s address verification API these updates are automatic and maintenance-free – so scarce technical resource can be allocated elsewhere without compromising data quality”.
Sintons is embracing mobile technology as a keyway to empower staff, freeing them from routine tasks to focus on client need. David continues:
“Parts of our business acquire new customers outside the office environment. We have developed our own Android application which minimises data entry time while maximising the quality of data entered. Our team is free from cumbersome paperwork and able to focus more fully on the prospective clients’ needs. The Android version of AFD’s postcode lookup API Plus is part of a considered strategy to strengthen our business with mobile technology. It plays a significant role in reducing data entry from 5 minutes to 30 seconds.”
The process efficiency is now resulting in increased acquisition of new, valuable clients. Sintons now has a system in place that prevents any user inputting an incorrect address and a wider understanding of how important this is in order to maintain the highest levels of data integrity.
www.sintons.co.uk
Whilst it is always best to make sure data is entered correctly in the first place, this isn’t always possible: especially if you’re an organisation dealing with legacy databases or have little or no control of the data source itself.
So…. AFD has a quest to help even these organisations clean contact data! It is a quest for the highest levels of speed, combined with the best and most accurate levels of matching. It is a quest for continuous improvement which AFD has engaged in for 27 years.
The latest release of Refiner (our cleansing engine) is benchmarked as best-in-class! Users love the range of deployment options which now include server-based and hosted offerings, with a thin client front end, for ease of use and integration. Refiner can also be installed locally on both Windows and Linux platforms for blisteringly fast performance.
Yes. Refiner is rebuilt on our proprietary “Performance Evolution” platform. This builds on the 27-year matching logic heritage and internal specialist data skills to deliver real-world speed improvements of up to 20-fold. Users have already reported cleaning 3 million records per hour with Refiner!
It’s not just about the speed – benchmarking Refiner with alternative engines showed both more matching – and better matching. Let’s face it: increased speed is a definite bonus, but no one wants to introduce errors into data, do they?
A wide variety of additional data can be appended to your contact database during a Refiner session. For example: geodemographic data (relative affluence, life stage and lifestyle) for segmentation, and grid references (longitude/latitude) to pinpoint a geographic location. Other data available includes government, health, education, and local authority administration. In addition, you may want to append data that relates more specifically to your industry (insurance, utility, etc). Our boffins have built Refiner so that any datasets relevant to your industry can be easily included with it – you can even provide your own and we will build it into Refiner for you.
Phone and Email data can now be validated – in bulk. Is the mobile or landline number valid or not? Is the email address valid? Refiner will get results – LIVE. This helps by confirming accurate data and flagging data that needs to be re-checked – which is a real support toward accuracy and currency of personal data – core to GDPR compliance.
An easy way to find out is to use our free health check service. You’ll receive a detailed condition report and access to a free specialist consultation. This will help you evaluate the report and understand practical options to solve any issues identified. Choose to meet our specialist Postcode People via Teams or face-to face. To arrange this please contact Joel Miller on 01624 811709 or email joel.miller@afd.co.uk.
When Ken Geddes founded CarsVansAndBikes.com he set out to disrupt the online vehicle advertising space. How? By maximising dealer revenue AND providing the best user experience.
CEO Ken shares:
“We have helped dealers maximise revenue by reducing their advertising cost compared to other vehicle sales platforms by 85%. And for private sellers wanting to advertise their vehicle, there is no charge at all.”
Not content with just reducing costs for vehicle sellers, the innovative use of technology delivers a smooth experience for dealers, private sellers, and buyers too. Ken continues:
“To provide the best experience, our platform needed to be easy for both dealers and private sellers to list their vehicles for sale, and user-friendly for buyers to find the right vehicle for them. We need to know that all the dealer locations are accurate to confidently filter and display only vehicles within a buyer’s maximum travel distance. If the location is wrong the journey is wasted and the sale probably lost. This disappoints the potential buyer and the dealer.
The first step for online dealer registration is to enter the address of each branch in the dealer network. AFD’s address lookup solution makes this process very quick… and accurate.”
When private sellers advertise their vehicles, the precise location must also be accurate to make plans for collection and avoid unnecessary delays.
Ken continues: “This service couldn’t have been considered without an accurate, robust addressing solution. We have dealers all over the country bidding for vehicles owned by private motorists, they need to know (almost to the pound) the transportation costs, due to the tight margins. It could be a disaster if there was a mistake in the address entered and the dealership had issues collecting a vehicle. Our credibility would be questioned and reputation-wise, it’s not where we would ever want to be.”
Ken is no stranger to using disruptive online innovation to help the consumer: “Twenty years ago I pioneered energy price comparison for household energy bills by founding Energylinx. It was then I first partnered with AFD Software for data validation. Our comparison system enabled households to save billions of pounds by showing better energy deals and making it easy for them to switch suppliers.
Most energy bills are paid via Direct Debit. The slightest mistake in a bank account number or sort code would make the collection of the monthly payments impossible. AFD’s bank validation solution helped prevent these errors by highlighting them at the point of data entry – enabling immediate correction.
We also integrated address validation, which cut user entry time by up to 90% AND helped ensure each address was error-free. Of course, this is vital if energy suppliers are to match new customers to meter points successfully. ”
Setting up his next business, at least one decision was easy, as Ken relates: “Twenty years of genuine experience gives a solid amount of time to review a supplier fairly. When building the CarsVansAndBikes.com platform we asked, ‘Is it better to build this or license it?’ With address validation, there was no debate. The team wanted AFD – why would we go and look for something else?
We view data accuracy as a critical service and therefore it must first be a dependable service. We have always had issues with other software, updates would break a process or make it work differently. With AFD Software we don’t have that anxiety, we have confidence.
Part of this confidence is that the Postcode People at AFD do what they say they are going to do. That’s not just the tech, it is every person I’ve met. They’re a bunch of straightforward real people and that’s good to deal with. We’re all tight for time and can’t do things quickly if we don’t have the support behind us.
We want all users of CarsVansAndBikes.com to have a positive experience from registration through to vehicle sales or purchases. To achieve this, we need all elements of the system to work in harmony, and central to this are partners we trust – like AFD Software.”
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.
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AFD Software attended the SROC 23 conference in March to meet our 100+ customers in the HE sector that currently rely on AFD’s address lookup, email validation and phone validation solutions. We also met with Universities that do not currently use AFD’s data validation solutions.
We ran polls on each day with the following questions and results:
On the first day of SROC we asked; “What is the biggest source of poor-quality data at your institution?”
A) Students
B) Staff
C) UCAS
We had a clear winner with A) Students receiving 62% of votes, followed by B) Staff with 27% of the votes, and C) UCAS receiving 11% of the votes.
On the second day of SROC we asked delegates; “How do you rate the quality of your student contact data?”
A) Excellent
B) Needs Improvement
C) Poor
Thanks to all the participants, B) Needs Improvement was the landslide winner receiving 62% of votes, followed by C) Poor with 25% of the votes, and A) Excellent receiving 13% of the votes. Clearly AFD customers voted for A!
AFD Software helps over 100 Universities validate and/or cleanse student address, email, and phone data. Contact one of our specialists today to find out how we can help improve poor quality at your institution.
www.afd.co.uk/education
AFD Software attended the UCISA 23 conference in March in Liverpool to meet with IT teams from Universities across the UK and discuss challenges around student contact data accuracy (address, email and phone).
Did you know that over 100 Universities now rely on AFD’s address validation and address verification solutions to help ensure student address data is validated at the point of entry?
A growing number of institutions are now looking to validate email and phone data as well as cleanse the existing address, email and phone data they have.
More information and case studies can be seen at www.afd.co.uk/he-solutions
Nelson and Colne College has a national reputation for educational success and is seen within the Further Education sector as a beacon of excellence for teaching and learning.
Following the successful merger of Nelson and Colne College and Accrington and Rossendale College in November 2018, Nelson and Colne College has retained its place in the College Group as the Sixth Form centre due to its distinguished stature for academic achievement.
Offering an outstanding range of A Levels, vocational courses, Apprenticeships and Higher Education provision. Generations of families have benefited from an exceptional education at Nelson and Colne College. One of the college’s key achievements is a 99% A Level Pass Rate!
They have benefitted from AFD’s Address, phone and email validation tools for the past five years to quickly validate student contact data at the point of entry.
“AFD Software works in the background to validate our student contact address, email and phone numbers. It’s a testament to the product that we’ve not looked at it for years!”
Alex Wilkinson, Senior MIS Administrator, Nelson & Colne College Group
Over 200 Colleges, Sixth Forms and Adult learning Providers rely on AFD Software’s to validate their student contact data. Find out more here.
Derwen College offers residential and day placements to students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), aged 16–25.
With four sites based in Shropshire, their students have many opportunities to experience real work settings and have a choice of pathway areas, with subjects including:
For the past four years, the college has used AFD’s Address Lookup, Email Validation, and Phone Validation solutions to ensure all student contact data that is entered by staff or students is valid.
“We added live phone and email validation from AFD Software to our address validation. Now, potential data entry errors are known immediately so they can be corrected – before being saved to our database. In addition, when communicating with students and next of kin by post, phone, and email – we now maximise the chance of connection. In short, AFD is helping us with contact data accuracy, GDPR compliance and the deliverability of communications – regardless of which channel we use to send them”.
Trevor Sharples – MIS Manager, Derwen College
Over 200 Colleges, Sixth Forms and Adult learning Providers rely on AFD Software’s to validate their student contact data. Find out more here.
Coleg Cambria were founded in 2013. They have since established themselves as a leading UK education provider. Now one of the largest colleges in the UK, they educate approximately 6,000 full-time students, 20,000 part-time learners.
Across five sites the college offers A Levels, GCSEs, BTECs, Welsh for Adults, and Higher Education provisions. The college also works in partnership with over 1000 employers locally and nationally to help students gain apprenticeship and traineeship opportunities.
The college has used AFD’s Address Lookup solution for the past seven years to help ensure student address data is entered accurately.
“If only all software was like AFD. We don’t think about it, we don’t do anything. It updates itself; it just works – glad we made the switch”.
Felicity Brandish – Director of IS, Coleg Cambria.
Over 200 Colleges, Sixth Forms and Adult learning Providers rely on AFD Software’s to validate their student contact data. Find out more here.
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.