Is your business truly aware of the value of accurate address data?
In today's fast-paced marketplace, location is a key data element for most business applications. Yet combining location-based services (LBS) with corporate strategies often requires hours of planning. To simplify the process, MapIT, a leading provider of quality enriched digital mapping solutions to businesses across Africa, has launched a user-friendly Address Validation Tool (AVT). This tool has been carefully designed to help businesses of all sizes to keep their address databases accurate, up to date and easily accessible.
MapIT's AVT streamlines the whole process of capturing address data and assigning X and Y co-ordinates. It systematically guides the user through a step-by-step process of capturing province, town, suburb and street data. Address validation determines if an address in question actually exists. The result is an accurate, well-structured address with spot on GPS co-ordinates. The application is especially useful for improving mail/goods delivery, ensuring high quality database marketing, enabling enhanced CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solutions and therefore increased ROI by ensuring your information is used in an optimal manner.
"By having an in-house spatial address database, the door to business intelligence opens and creates a multitude of possibilities," explains Etienne Louw, Managing Director of MapIT.
However, for true business intelligence you need an accurate address database. Address capturing has numerous complicating factors which can be controlled by using MapIT's AVT. This tool removes opportunities for people to guess or input manual data and helps to lower operating costs due to fewer undeliverable returns.
For example, a common mistake would be to assume that Durbanville is in Durban, when in fact Durbanville forms part of the greater City of Cape Town metropolitan area. The AVT solves this type of problem. The person entering the address information (either over the phone or via the Internet) will not be physically able to enter incorrect details by following the step-by-step process of entering the correct data, resulting in an accurate database.
"Our research has shown that one of the great challenges of improving competitiveness of business in South Africa is the concept of dirty data. This is information that can't be extracted, exported or re-used because it is poorly captured," says Arthur Goldstuck, Managing Director of World Wide Worx, the leader in technology research in South Africa. "Dirty data undermines business in areas as diverse as business intelligence, customer relationship management, knowledge management and market research. It also has a massively negative impact on government services. Any tool that addresses the problem at its roots will be of great benefit in both public and private enterprise."
MapIT's international mapping shareholder, Tom Tom, invested in MapIT because of the consistency and accuracy of MapIT's digital mapping activities in Africa. MapIT's accurate digital map sets allow the AVT to deliver results to organisations' databases. Not only will it ensure that new addresses are inputted correctly, but also previous addresses can be updated and corrected.
MapIT's AVT is a multi-platform support component that allows users to integrate the tool into new or existing solutions. To view the tool, visit www.addressvalidation.co.za.
For more information, contact MapIT: +27 (0) 12 345-8015, avt@mapit.co.za.
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