December 2009 Archives

Wayward Seasonal Catalog Waste Ends With Web-based Apps

By Blog Administrator on December 23, 2009 1:19 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

By Donna Hogan
Special Correspondent for TechNews Arizona

 

 

'Tis the season to pack mailboxes with hefty holiday gift catalogs from Williams-Sonoma, See's Candies, Sears, et al, touting great deals on everything from peppermint bark to perfume to pots and pans.

 

But how many of the glossy paper-based pitches for toys or fishing gear or lingerie are addressed to a long-ago homeowner and resented by the "or current" resident who has to dispose of them?

 

Many in Arizona are familiar with drives by organizations like Tucson Clean & Beautiful, Desert Dwellers Disposal in Prescott, and even the state-wide Arizona Technology Council, which run regular programs to eliminate paper and other consumer waste after the fact.

 

For some consumers, the voluminous Christmas-time wish books are the delight of the season, but others bemoan the number of trees sacrificed as they toss the titanic tomes in recycle bins.

 

A California company, Melissa Data, said it saves retailers' money and customers' good will with a Web-based software service that eliminates duplicate mailings and automatically changes addresses based on U.S. Post Office's up-to-date address lists.

 

Every year, as many as 18 percent to 20 percent of Americans move, said Greg Brown, Melissa Data marketing director.

 

"That's nearly 55 million people," Brown said. "The average data base, which is the life blood of a company, goes stale so often."

 

The company specializes in providing "data hygiene" for small- to medium-sized businesses, merging and purging their data bases to keep addresses current and correct, he said.

 

To read the full article published in TNAZ, click here:

http://www.technewsarizona.com/Article.aspx?d=20091220&t=0700

 

Case Study: Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM)

By Blog Administrator on December 16, 2009 2:52 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

In this case study, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) was able to cleanse and incorporate their data from about 30 distinct source systems, by integrating Melissa Data's Total Data Quality Integration Toolkit (TDQ-IT). TDQ-IT works within the SSIS data flow to deliver a wide range of data integration, transformation, and cleansing functionality including: profiling, parsing, cleansing, matching, and monitoring. TDQ-IT was able to detect and eliminate NOSM's duplicates, saving the university large amounts of time and money.

 

http://www.melissadata.com/success/pdf/casestudy-ontario-school-of-medicine-tdq-it.pdf

 

Data Quality Tips from Our Experts

By Blog Administrator on December 8, 2009 3:25 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

By Joseph Vertido

DQT Product Specialist

 

Understanding Preferred and Vanity City Names

 

If you were to take a stroll along the streets in front of the Kodak Theater in California and ask people, "What city am I in?" You might be surprised to find that while some people will say you're in Los Angeles, others will say Hollywood! Fortunately in this case, both of these city names are actually correct.

 

For every city, there is an official name assigned to it by the USPS®. These are called "preferred city names." In some cities however, there may be alternatives to the assigned USPS preferred city name. These are called "vanity city names." Although vanity names are considered alternates, they are still deemed valid and deliverable by the USPS.

 

The "UseUSPSPreferredCityNames" Property

 

Melissa Data's Address Object will verify addresses that use vanity city names and preserves them by default. But for those who need to prune out vanity cities in their database - for example insurance companies who are required to use only the preferred city names - the Address Object has the option to automatically convert vanity names to the USPS preferred city. This is done by setting the UseUSPSPreferredCityNames Property to true:

 

AddrObj.UseUSPSPreferredCityNames = true;

 

Thus entering an address with a vanity city such as:

 

6801 Hollywood Blvd, Holywood CA

 

will verify to its preferred city name:

 

6801 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles CA

 

 

Preferred City Names and the ZIPData Interface

 

The FindZIP Method of the ZIPData Interface allows you to search for cities in a given ZIP Code. Setting the GetLastLineRecord flag of the FindZIP Method to 0, will return all the available cities (including vanity cities).

 

For example:

 

FindZIP("10008", 0) and FindZIPNext()

 

will return the following:

 

Manhattan - Vanity City

New York - Preferred City

 

Setting the GetLastLineRecord flag to 1 however, lets you limit your search to preferred cities only. Thus:

 

FindZIP("10008", 1)

 

Will only return:

 

New York

 

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