Addressing Business - QAS eNewsletter Issue No.10, March 2005

eNewsletter Issue No.11 August '05 - Addressing Business

In this issue:

Announcing QuickAddress Pro Web 5.0
Address Validation for World Wide Websites
Data Quality for Retail and Mail-Order Companies
An Interview with CommercialWare
Join us and 1-800-GOT-JUNK?
QAS Webinar on August 23rd - you're invited
Ask the Tech
QAS Quiz!

Announcing QuickAddress Pro Web 5.0 - Address Validation for World Wide Websites

QAS is proud to announce the release of QuickAddress Pro Web 5.0. "Pro Web 5.0," as we call it, extends our leading front-end address validation functionality to public-facing and eCommerce websites.

Rather than relying on customers to provide correct spellings and ZIP + 4®s, Pro Web 5.0 does it for them, by validating addresses against official U.S. Postal Service records at just a click of the mouse. This simple step helps:

Ensure that packages arrive at their destination
Reduce delivery service surcharges
Increase customer satisfaction

Best-practice implementation of the software can even decrease shopping cart dropout rates, by reassuring buyers that all goods ordered will be shipped to a deliverable address.

In Pro Web 5.0, we have added better scalability and compatibility, and support for the latest Web technologies such as XML, SOAP, J2EE and .NET. Full sample code is provided for ASP, JSP, C#.NET, VB.NET, ASP.NET and PHP environments.

Address data sets for up to 17 industrialized countries are available, providing a world-leading international solution if required.

View the Demo

Data Quality for Retail and Mail-Order Companies

An Interview with CommercialWare

Jane Ward of QAS recently spoke with Jonathan Ellman, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at CommercialWare . CommercialWare and QAS jointly developed the popular QAS for CommercialWare application, which delivers real-time address validation to customers of CommercialWare’s suite of client- and order-management software.

QAS: CommercialWare has been helping retailers manage client data since 1978. Care to comment on any of the trends in data quality that you’ve seen?

CW: I’ve been with CommercialWare for 24 years, and since the beginning, it has been very clear that the quality of the data that is captured at the point of order is paramount to both top and bottom line success for our clients. It’s not hard to comprehend that if we capture the wrong name or address, profits will be affected. In the best case scenario, you spend more than you should on shipping. In the worst case scenario, you don’t reach your customer, and the package returns to your warehouse, perhaps not even in usable shape.

QAS: Why did you choose to partner with QAS on this solution?

CW: It’s an obvious synergy to put the QAS data capture, data hygiene solution in front of ours. Our Business Development Partnership program includes a strict due diligence process. It’s based on technology, but almost equally important, we look for a culture of client-centricity. We engage in partnerships with companies who share our concern for the long term success of our clients.

There’s always a lot of work involved with putting two products together. We worked, and continue to work, very hard with QAS to make sure that what the client sees is a seamless integration. When technical issues surface, and they always will, QAS and CommercialWare have a very coordinated response to get to the resolution. Traditionally in this industry, the client is put into the position of deciding which partner is responsible for the technical issue, and the partners might even argue amongst themselves. That doesn’t happen in this partnership. Both parties step up, take responsibility, and work together to resolve the matter in question for the client.

QAS: Where do you see the partnership, and data quality in general, heading for your clients?

CW: Well, of course there’s been a dramatic shift toward collecting data from the Web. It is very likely that companies will start generating more than 50% of their direct orders via the Web in the next couple of years. CommercialWare was an early proponent of the cross-channel approach, offering a suite that enables our clients to synchronize efforts and data, from catalog, Web, or point-of-sale. Our clients know they need to look at the customer holistically across channels, and we are there to enable that. This is becoming even more critical during the Web revolution.

To that end, we’ve working with QAS on many of the new Web and other products in development, to ensure that we provide the same seamless functionality to our clients, no matter where they take their orders.

QAS Webinar on August 23rd: Join us and 1-800-GOT-JUNK?

We invite you to attend a 60-minute Webinar, where the address data quality experts at QAS will show you why the costs and inefficiencies caused by invalid customer addresses are not "just another cost of doing business." You can attend right from your desk, using a phone and an Internet connection.

Our guest speaker will be Roman Azbel, Vice President of IT at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, a QuickAddress customer and North America’s largest junk removal service. Azbel and his team used QuickAddress to:

Increase the full address rate (addresses including ZIP+4) from 4% to 96% in one year.
Enable customer service representatives to stop devoting most of their time to ”trouble tickets” that required manual address verification, and start devoting it to real customer service initiatives, like efficient scheduling.
Decrease returned mail – fewer invoices and marketing pieces are now returned.
Improve truck delivery rates – fewer trucks are now arriving at the wrong houses.

	Topic:		The Benefits of Front-end Address Validation for Data Quality
	Date:		Tuesday, Aug 23rd
	Time:		2pm [EDT] ; 11am [PDT]

Ask the Tech

Question: What search improvements have been made for Pro Web 5.0?

Answer: Pro Web now searches numbered streets, like “100 w 600 n, uniondale,” faster and better than ever. It also strips out unnecessary punctuation, like the period in “N. First St, San Jose” Finally, Pro Web 5.0 is even smarter about weighing address elements to return near matches.

For further details on either configuration of QuickAddress Pro Web, including online demonstrations of both types.