Data Quality Authority

Did you know that effective data management and data quality are no longer "nice-to-have" options? According to independent consultant Joe McKendrick, organizations of all types are turning to data analytics to gain that extra edge in understanding both what customers are doing, and what they intend to do.

Read about the three elements that should be part of any effective data management effort here:

http://www.information-management.com/news/data_management_quality-10018204-1.html?zkPrintable=true

Did you know that Melissa Data's address cleansing Web service can be easily integrated with SAP? With just a click of a button, your address is verified, corrected and standardized. In this video, Forrest Horner, a senior IT analyst for Sacramento County, shows a snippet of the Web services' address cleansing functionality within a SAP environment. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-aCtcDSfKo

The address cleansing function is just one of the many features Melissa Data's WebSmart Services offers. The company recently introduced several new Web services to the WebSmart line. These functions include the Phone Verifier, ZIP Search, and Street Search.

• Phone Verifier validates phone numbers down to the entire 10 digits, appends geographic information, identifies landline vs. cell and business vs. residence.
• The ZIP Search service allows you to search for, or by city names and ZIP™ codes.
• The Street Search service lets you query all possible streets in the U.S., therefore allowing you to generate suggestions on bad address inputs.

The services are operating system and programming language neutral and support multiple protocols, including SOAP, XML and REST.

Call 1-800-MELISSA (635-4772) for more information or to request a free trial, go to:

http://www.melissadata.com/dqt/websmartres.asp

David Loshin, president on Knowledge Integrity Inc., offers four possible examples of organizational change that have ramifications in association with the data quality program:

1. Reorganization and downsizing

2. Outsourcing

3. Offshoring

4. IT management changes

In each of these instances, the challenges associated with changes to organizational staff will impact the continuity of the data quality program. Therefore, make sure that you accommodate for the possibilities of how staff turnover and organizational changes will affect the program at the implementation stage.

How is this done? Read David's suggestions and the full article here: http://www.melissadata.com/enews/articles/07082010/2.htm

A recent report from TDWI offers a checklist of 10 best practices that shows it's time to raise the bar on integration expectations, as the industry's evolution has outpaced mindsets.

Philip Russom, senior manager for TDWI Research and author of the report, emphasizes that there's no silver bullet for "ideal" data integration. As the report explains, DI is a diverse discipline that makes use of a number of tools, depending on one's business and technological requirements.

For any reader with an open mind, this report redefines data integration and its potential in modern, future-facing terms. Read the full article here: http://www.melissadata.com/enews/articles/07082010/1.htm

You spend serious money trying to capture data from your Web forms - but are your leads less useful due to bad data? Are customer data entry errors - such as omitting a letter or punctuation mark from an e-mail address, transposing numbers in a mailing address ZIP Code™, or leaving out the area code of a phone number - causing inefficiencies and waste?

We've recently released a new white paper that explores three ways you can optimize Web forms to improve lead quality, customer retention, delivery times and ultimately, your bottom line.

Download our free white paper here:

http://www.melissadata.com/whitepaper/dqt-webform-whitepaper.pdf

Who can benefit from quality data? Everyone. Whether you're a mailer or software engineer, clean data is a necessity for all businesses to operate and thrive. We've compiled the best of our contact data quality and enrichment white papers to help you do just that. http://www.melissadata.com/enews/101706.html

Our new catalog features many new products and services like Telco Data Solutions, GeoPoints, and IP Locator. Review real life application stories, white papers, and our new ROI calculator--all resources to show you how data quality can help save you mailing costs. Take the Data Quality Challenge--does your database measure up? Be one of the first to benefit from this no-risk data analysis. (Download the catalog and refer to the back for details.) Discover all the diverse resources at your fingertips here!

Have you taken the Data Quality Challenge yet? If not, you could be missing out on data quality issues that are affecting your bottom line.

Melissa Data is presenting an exclusive Data Quality Challenge special offer to IRCE 2010 attendees: Submit a sample file of your contact data for analysis by July 30th, 2010, and you'll automatically be entered in a drawing to win an Apple iPod Touch 8G. Five (5) winners will be selected in a random drawing on Monday, August 9 2010.

To see the official rules and enter the drawing, click here: http://www.melissadata.com/dqt/data-quality-challenge-irce-drawing.html

The Internet Retailer tradeshow starts tomorrow in Chicago, IL.

Pervasive Integration Offers Out-of-the-box Connectivity to Melissa Data's Data Quality Solutions

Pervasive Software® Inc. (NASDAQ: PVSW), a global leader in cloud-based and on-premises data integration software, announced a partnership with Melissa Data, a provider of data quality software and services, including out-of-the-box connectivity to Melissa Data's data quality offerings -- giving both companies' customers the benefits of seamless data quality and data integration capabilities.

According to Gartner, "Data integration, data quality/profiling and federation software and technology solutions will continue to converge and new functionality will emerge. Moreover, the convergence of data integration and data quality will enable the introduction of data quality into data integration work."

As customers increasingly seek to converge data quality and data integration processes, the partnership provides the benefit of both Melissa Data's leading data quality offerings and Pervasive integration capabilities.