subject: Postcode Software to Assist Your Data Cleaning [print this page] Postcode Software to Assist Your Data Cleaning
A postcode is a powerful little unit of numbers and in the modern era it has become something we certainly take completely for granted. We rely on postcodes for so many different things and it's probably fair to say that our lives would be far messier and much more confusing without them!
In the UK, the postcode system that we now enjoy was developed over a period of years and has pretty much been in this incarnation since around 1974. According to Wikipedia, there are close to 2 million postcodes in the UK. Now that is a lot of data to manage! Remember, that number is for postcodes not addresses...there are way more than 2 million addresses, how does 28 million sound?!
In business, the postcode is an absolutely vital portion of data and the effective collecting, collating and maintaining of postcodes is of paramount importance. Successfully managing all the postcodes required for your business can both save money and make money if implemented correctly.
Imagine the millions of mail shots that get sent out every year with the sole purpose of generating business. If the postcode data isn't accurate, then that's a lot of wasted mail shots and money, not to mention a lot of disgruntled members of the public who were either expecting your mail shot and didn't receive it or received it and really didn't want to!
Fortunately, there is postcode software available for businesses to be able to complete many of these marketing and customer based tasks much more smoothly. Software such as Postcode Lookup and PAF (Postcode Address File) Cleansing often form part of the frontline of effective data cleansing systems to enable business to manage data correctly and methodically.
Postcode Lookup pretty much does what it says on the tin and has the ability to collect complete addresses from partial ones and to ensure that any data you may use in either a marketing campaign or indeed a customer retention campaign, is completely accurate and perhaps more importantly, up to date.
PAF Cleansing can work in conjunction with other postcode software such as the postcode lookup and is once again designed to provide companies with a system that will collate and sort address data, providing accuracy. PAF Cleansing will also help with many different kinds of address formats and layouts.
So, we can see how important postcode software really is in the effective running of business, from top to bottom.
