Melissa Data Helps Developers Improve the Quality of Business Data

fact sheet Vendor: Melissa Data (www.MelissaData.com)

Melissa Data envisions an opportunity for software developers to bring the technology and business worlds together, and that opportunity is in the databases that organizations use to keep track of their customers.

Your company's ability to keep in contact with your customers depends on the quality of the data in those databases, and chances are that any combination of old data, database migrations, multiple data entry points, and mergers and acquisitions mean the data is likely inaccurate in any number of ways.

There's an old business adage that says it's cheaper to keep existing customers than to acquire new ones. In order to reach your existing customers in the most efficient manner possible, the data in your database needs to be accurate, current, complete, not redundant, and standardized. Data that's missing any of these characteristics can mean lost revenue and/or increased costs.

Let's look at the costs the business incurs when you try to use bad data to reach customers by mail. Studies show that almost 24 percent of all mail is incorrectly addressed. Nearly three percent of mail is completely undeliverable. The U.S. Postal Service® charges $0.21 for its address correction service. Bulk parcels returned as undeliverable cost nearly $2 per item. Services like FedEx or UPS charge $5 for undeliverable items.

This is where Melissa Data can help software developers create solutions that address any company's need to communicate with customers. The tools encompass APIs and web services, cover all of the major programming languages used today, and work on all the major operating systems. Each tool is built with scalability and performance in mind. They can be added to Web applications to ensure complete address information is entered by customers, or can be used to enhance existing information and create better data.

"We're trying as best we can to provide easy integration for everyone with 32- and 64-bit multiplatform tools," said Bud Walker, product manager at Melissa Data.

Melissa Data is a direct marketing company devoted to contact data and data verification. The company has grown from providing a single ZIP Code database in 1985 to a leading provider of more than 100 data quality solutions.

Melissa Data's Data Quality Suite is a collection of tools created specifically to verify, standardize, cleanse, and parse customer relationship management (CRM) data. They can also genderize names. Walker calls the Data Quality Suite "a data quality firewall to prevent bad data from entering the database at the point of entry."

In addition to the Data Quality Suite, Melissa Data also offers more than 13 data quality tools a la carte to software developers trying to solve specific problems in their organizations' data.

Data Quality and Enrichment Tools
Melissa Data's tools for data quality and enrichment can correct and validate data and can also enrich data that wasn't passed on by the customer. For instance, when an address is submitted, Melissa Data's tools can return additional information like the Carrier Route, County Name, County FIPS, Latitude and Longitude, Time Zone, Congressional District, and more. Among the tools in this category are:

• Address Object, an API that corrects and validates addresses and then standardizes them against the U.S.Postal Service DPV® system
• Phone Object, which verifies U.S. and Canadian phone numbers at their point of entry into the database and corrects and appends area codes
• GeoCoder Object, which adds census tract and block data, latitude and longitude data for addresses, and more
• Email Object, which instantly corrects common typos in e-mail addresses and standardizes them when entered into the database

Data Management Tools
These tools help beautify and dedupe data during migration. They include:

• MatchUp Object, an industrial strength deduping API that identifies and can merge/purge duplicate records
• StyleList Object, which can standardize data from different sources that use different casing, inconsistent abbreviations, or punctuation

Mailing and Shipping Tools
Melissa Data's mailing and shipping tools help ensure businesses have the right address information for mailing and bulk shipping. They include:

• Presort Object, which automates postal presorting routines for First-Class™ and Standard Mail® discounts
• RDBI, which verifies addresses as a residence or business for shipping efficiency (residential deliveries from shippers often carry a surcharge).
• The SmartMover Real-Time Web Service, which is a 24/7 change-of-address web service that uses the U.S. Postal Service's 48-month NCOALink® dataset.

More web services are available to keep phone numbers updated, correct addresses, and improve and enhance data.

ISV and OEM Partner Program
Melissa Data also offers a program for independent software vendors (ISV) and original equipment manufacturers (OEM) who want to include the company's tools in their applications.

"We've developed a very attractive program for our developer partners to provide data quality and enrichment capabilities to their software without adding R&D expenses," Walker said. "Our APIs and web services contain datasets subject to continual updating, and subscription-based pricing helps ISVs and OEMs develop recurring revenue streams."

Melissa Data also offers free technical support to partners.

Developers creating applications for CRM, for example, can use Melissa Data's tools to verify and clean the data being used in the system. In-house development teams can verify and enhance their organizations' existing data as well as new data that enter the database. In either case, Melissa Data provides tools that help developers solve a serious business need and manage costs.

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