AFD was chosen by Royal Mail over a decade ago to examine, process, and deliver the primary (Postcode Address File) PAF data to all consumers of “raw” PAF. This is the data that over 40,000 organisations rely on, and it is used by millions of individuals every day across the world.
No one knows PAF better than the Postcode People at AFD, with over 420 years of combined PAF knowledge and experience helping the thousands of organisations we serve to overcome their data difficulties. AFD Software remains the best choice for resolving your address data issues.
All 31 million delivery addresses in the British Isles are recorded in the Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File – and this file is at the core of a huge range of delivery services – not only for physical products, it is also the foundation for strategic planning and delivery of key services. AFD Processes the PAF to produce a suite of files from optical character recognition data for Royal Mail sorting machines through to multiple-residency details and geolocated addresses down to a 1 metre accuracy. Organisations, including AFD itself, use this data to build products, services and systems that help to deliver parcels, route goods, register patients, identify students and a cornucopia of other applications. AFD’s own products based on this file, drive the computerised systems used by some of the biggest logistics and distribution organisations in the British Isles, not just the postal service.
Like any large database, the PAF file is constantly changing, and Royal Mail relies on AFD Software’s established expertise every month to ensure that the file is properly assembled, quality-checked and speedily shipped either electronically or on physical media. AFD also processes hundreds of daily updates to the file to ensure key organisations are fully up to date where this is critical – and in the last month alone, over 30,000 new delivery points have been added.
AFD’s address lookup API and postcode lookup API with Royal Mail data deliver rapid, accurate address validation to thousands of organisations. Contact one of our experienced data quality consultants to discuss your requirements today.
In 2019, the UK celebrated the 60th anniversary of the postcode.
We use our Postcode practically every day for online purchasing, confirming our identities, checking traffic home, arranging trips for the next day, and so on. In fact, according to a recent Royal Mail survey, some people are more likely to remember their Postcode than their birthdays and significant anniversaries! But how well do you know the Postcode’s history?
During the 1850s, when mail volumes began to rise, it became evident that a complete addressing solution would be required. Initially, this meant merely dividing London into postal districts based on the points of the compass, each with its own head office. Many of these London postal districts, such as SE and NW, are still in operation today. The method was then expanded to other important towns and cities, but it wasn’t until 1959 that Ernest Maples (pictured below), the then Postmaster General, trialled a more comprehensive postal code – the form we know today – in Norwich.
Postcode Address File and Updates
The Postcode Address File (PAF) was produced in the early 1980s and contains all of the UK’s commercial and residential addresses. Data was captured electronically, however updating the file was done on paper, which was time-consuming.
PAF is now a fully digital, integrated system that can be updated in real-time. It receives over half a million updates every year, ensuring that it remains the UK’s most accurate and up-to-date addressing database, with over 31 million deliverable UK addresses spread across almost 1.8 million postcodes.
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.”
Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) data can now be returned using AFD’s Address Lookup and Data Cleansing Solutions.
EPC’s provide an indication of how much it will cost to heat and light a property, and how much CO2 the property emits.
The better the rating on the EPC certificate, the lower the cost of running the property.
Find out more about EPC data and how to access it when validating an address or appending to existing databases here.
The AFD team recently sponsored the Student Records Officers’ Conference (SROC) which brought together staff working in the field of student records within HE Providers together to:
AFD’s HE specific solutions that help the sector are detailed below:
Address Lookup
Fast, accurate address validation helps ensure student address data is correct at the point of entry. Our solution is quick to install as confirmed by the University of Dundee: “Upgrading to AFD Software within our student record system took the best part of a couple of hours. It just worked straight away. We needed to do some work within our online forms as we were now offering an online postcode lookup. The solution works straight out the box, but we needed to spend some time reorganising the structure of the forms so the postcode question was asked first rather than last. The actual postcode popup screen just worked with some small configuration changes made once globally.”
Batch cleansing address data – HESA Returns
Even with data validation in place, student address data can still be entered incorrectly and can be received in bulk from UCAS.
As accurate address data is one of the requirements for the HESA return, AFDs Refiner tool helps universities by taking all their address records and cleansing them against the best possible sources.
Many of our customers would have staff spending huge amounts of time manually checking addresses before discovering we could help do this process in around an hour.
POLAR data – Widening participation
In addition to cleaning and reformatting addresses, Refiner can also append Education specific data sets including POLAR4.
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.
POLAR4 data shows how likely young people are to participate in higher education according to where they live, this allows Universities to target specific areas with marketing efforts in a bid to meet targets for widening participation and essential funding.
Other datasets include Index of Multiple Deprivation (governments official rank of Postcode from most deprived to least deprived) and Censation, AFD’s geodemographic classification system that shows the typical age, affluence, lifestyle, interests and professions at Postcode level.
Phone and Email
HESA confirms that each institution is required to collect graduates’ personal contact details to contact them 15 months after graduation for the “Graduate Outcomes” survey.
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.
If your institute would benefit from AFD’s range of data validation and cleansing solutions contact one of our Data Quality Consultants on 01624 811711 or email postcode@afd.co.uk
Thousands of unique organisations rely on AFD’s validation and cleansing solutions to get contact data right. Based on customer feedback, our range of available datasets continues to increase as teams processing and analysing data look to avoid manual processes and maintain multiple datasets. Accurate addresses combined with relevant datasets have the power to yield much more useful information than either the address or the dataset on its own. Here are just some examples of datasets we already offer:
Participation Of Local Areas (POLAR ) classification data shows how likely young people are to participate in Higher Education (HE). Each postcode is given a rank between 1–5, with 1 being the lowest likelihood of HE participation and 5 being the highest. This data then helps AFD customers in the HE sector to more effectively target specific areas with marketing efforts to meet targets for widening participation (attracting students from areas less likely to go to University) and essential funding.
Not Yet Built (NYB) data helps identify properties that are still under construction or have been completed but do not yet appear on the Postcode Address File (PAF). NYB data allows businesses to process orders to deliver white goods and furniture, as well as critical services such as energy, phone, and internet, that wouldn’t ordinarily be possible without a valid address.
Censation, AFD’s geodemographic classification solution, indicates the relative affluence, life stage and lifestyle of the people living within a particular postcode. This powerful dataset helps organisations understand more about the ‘profile’ of their best customers and use this information to either target prospective customers or upsell to existing customers with relevant goods or services.
Property level latitude and longitude data combined with a valid address provide a pinpoint location at metre level accuracy. Integrating this solution into your chosen mapping tool allows delivery teams to find the actual delivery location quickly and accurately – preventing late or abandoned deliveries as well as lost time, additional staff cost and wasted fuel.
In the same way that adding AEB data transformed the productivity of Learning Curve Group’s database of student records, would your CRM database benefit from the inclusion of any datasets which are specific to your industry sector?
AFD’s expertise in combining datasets to overcome pains for our customers is one of the many reasons why the Postcode People at AFD are the go-to partner for address and data quality solutions.
Get in touch with our team today to discuss any requirements your organisation may have around linking datasets to reduce manual work, improve efficiency and of course, data accuracy.
Contact joel.miller@afd.co.uk or call 01624 811 711.
Learning Curve Group are a national training and education specialist. Their vision is to transform lives through learning, and by working with individuals, employers, and education providers, they make lifelong development accessible to everyone.
Data shows that adult participation in learning is not distributed evenly and those least likely to access available resources are adults living in poverty with the lowest qualifications. Targeted funding and delivery of the right training provision will help people in this demographic, enabling them to enter the workforce and enjoy the associated benefits of health, wellbeing and encouraging others in their communities to participate.
As one of the largest training providers in the UK, Learning Curve Group are unrivalled in the breadth and choice of courses they offer. Each year they also help over 4,500 employers with workplace development plans and qualifications. They deliver training to 100,000 learners helping them attain nationally recognised qualifications, learn new skills, and advance their careers.
Funding for adult learning has seen significant changes over the past few years. Until 2019, the Adult Education Budget (AEB) provided funding for adult learning, but funding is now split between the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) and devolved authorities.
The postcode of each learner determines who they receive funding from, so providers of adult learning courses need to know whether a course has available funding for a particular student. In some cases, addresses separated even by just one postcode district e.g., PE8 and PE9, have different sources of funding – and that’s where AFD can help!
We spoke with Steve Morris, Commercial Director at Learning Curve Group, to understand how they have navigated these changes to funding:
“In the new devolved-funding world, we now have a situation where there are multiple devolved authorities responsible for their own AEB, and the other postcodes that do not fall within those areas receive funding from ESFA. We now must understand who funds each learner based on their address and, more specifically, if funding is available to them for the course they have chosen. This will soon get even more complex when county devolution becomes a reality.
We need to avoid the scenario where learners were completing a 25-minute enrolment process then finding that their source of funding does not cover that course, resulting in wasted time and disappointment.”
“To ensure we could continue to provide our learners with the best possible experience from initial interest to enrolment, we needed a solution that would instantly identify which courses were available to each learner, based on their postcode.
After searching online, we found The Postcode People – who had the exact solution to our problem: an address lookup that provided an accurate address AND returned the relevant AEB data.
Now we had the right solution, the next job was to ensure we covered all points of data entry on the website, CRM system, and Management Information system.
Prior to introducing AFD’s solution, we had multiple tools to validate addresses and capture and attach funding data. We would run a separate process to check the address in the back office and then match this with the funding information. We now have an automated process using the learner’s valid address to tie it all together, saving valuable time and helping ensure address and funding accuracy, and helping to avoid disappointment and frustration for the potential student.
After introducing point of entry validation, attention turned to other areas of the organisation that would benefit from linking address data with the relevant funding bodies.
Rachel Cornforth, Head of Marketing, explains: “By appending the additional geodemographic classification data from AFD which adds relative affluence, lifestage, and lifestyle, we can build a better picture of an ‘ideal learner profile’ for specific courses. We can then take this data to upsell courses to existing customers with a similar profile and reach out to similar potential learners, safe in the knowledge that the correct funding is available for the courses we advertise to them.
We also contact employers to provide training courses to their teams. Our sales staff needed support in categorising businesses as they added them to our CRM system to facilitate business segmentation. Using AFD’s business data we can quickly append business sector, turnover and employee count to our data, and tailor which courses are relevant to their business. Segmented marketing will save both manual processing time and wasted opportunity costs.
Specifically targeting businesses with courses that are relevant to them and their industry, will improve sales performance and ensure the sales team can better target their efforts.”
When discussing AFD Software as data quality partners, Steve commented: “AFD not only had the right solution for our exact requirement, they also had the right team to talk us through all their relevant solutions and help improve wider data issues.
We used a third-party contractor to help us implement the AFD solutions, and the AFD team went above and beyond communicating with them and representing us to have everything put in place.
I genuinely cannot say enough good things about the service that has been delivered, the proposal was clear and all the staff we dealt with were highly knowledgeable about this area and skilled in what they do.
This project went beyond validating an address, I am confident that The Postcode People at AFD are the go-to provider of data quality solutions and would recommend them to other organisations that need accurate data and a review of data processes.”
To discuss your organisation’s data accuracy requirements and review data processes, contact joel.miller@afd.co.uk or call 01624 811711.
We enjoyed exhibiting and presenting at the Tribal Empower conference this week. AFD Software is the preferred supplied of address, email and phone validation and cleansing to over 90 universities and 200 colleges.
AFD’s data cleansing engine, Refiner, specifically helps Universities with cleansing contact data received in bulk from UCAS and in preparation for HESA returns.
The University of Dundee has worked with AFD’s solutions to improve their student data processes, they provided feedback around how much time and frustration we helped them overcome;
“Following the implementation of AFD’s Refiner address cleansing process, for the first time since the introduction of Graduate Outcomes return we have managed to process the return and successfully submit with just a handful of errors compared to thousands each year that we have had to manually cleanse record by record. We managed to process, deliver and commit the return in less than 24 hours which is monumental and a real step forward for the optimisation of our Statutory Returns.”
Find out more at www.afd.co.uk/education
AFD Software is attending the Microsoft Cloud Community event “Scottish Summit 2022” to meet with other organisations that develop solutions for Dynamics 365 or use Dynamics 365 as their CRM system.
Come and visit the team on the 10th and 11th of June to discuss how address, email, phone and bank validation integrated within D365 could benefit your organisation at The Technology and Innovation Centre, Glasgow Strathclyde University.
More information about our D365 plugin can be found here
AFD Software and The Algorithm People have partnered to deliver AFD’s market-leading geocoding and address lookup technology within The Algorithm People’s award-winning “My Transport Planner” route optimisation service.
Colin Ferguson, CEO of The Algorithm People said: “Combining our optimisation algorithms with AFD’s advanced geocoding and postcode-lookup service, will generate even greater savings and efficiencies for our clients. We saw a combined 24% reduction in mileage and 17% overall saving in time in trials we carried out, due to the very high accuracy of the address information.”
Jonathan Stocks, Head of Sales & Marketing at AFD Software explains: “Partnering with The Algorithm People and integrating our respective technologies, opens a new market for us, and offers an enhanced value proposition with tangible benefits for our existing customers. Our Address Validation and Matching technology provides a greater level of location accuracy, which reduces time spent by the driver trying to find addresses and when used in conjunction with The Algorithm People’s optimisation algorithms, delivers a further reduction in mileage“.
If you are interested in finding out how AFD’s address and location validation and cleansing solutions are helping other organisations in the logistics sector, contact one of our address and location data experts today.
Channel preferences are unique to everyone. Physical mail, email, text, phone call, messaging apps and social media are all used by organisations to communicate with their customers.
Accurate data is key to organisations that want to maintain contact with their customers or supporters.
As of 2021, 96% of UK adults have a mobile phone they actively use and choose as a channel of communication, the requirement of accurately capturing and maintaining phone numbers has never been more important.
AFD’s phone validation solution helps ensure accurate data by confirming the number of digits and format are correct, then going a step further by confirming the number is live.
Phone verification gives organisations full confidence that they can communicate with their customers. To highlight the cost an incorrect phone number can have, we caught up with a long-term customer of AFD to get their feedback.
Paul Brownlow, Systems Development Manager at South & City College Birmingham states: “The college were concerned about the accuracy of student entered phone numbers and emails. When contacting students for course interviews, open days and other key information, we found multiple instances where the mobile phone numbers provided were wrong, either due to error or intentional misinformation.
Each student studying at the college between 16 and 18 years old effectively provides us with £5,000 per annum of vital funding, whilst students over 18 provide £2,000. Preventing one or two students from slipping through the net, because they would otherwise miss a key communication and fail to enrol, more than covers the cost of email and phone validation from AFD.”
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.