From Human to Machine

But with improved scanning technology, machines are now able to read virtually all of these addresses that most people would consider garbage. There were 55 facilities filled with hundreds of workers deciphering these illegible pieces of mail at one time. But as the technology advances, they are just down to two centers with plans to shut one of them down. Machines are now replacing human labor to figure out where the mail should go. The irony is that the mail these workers received was originally rejected by machines that couldn’t read them. Now it’s gone full circle and the workers are now being replaced by machines with better scanning technology. Once cost-cutting measures take place in September, the facility in Salt Lake City, Utah will be the Postal Service’s only center for reading illegible mail.

Common Threads

We found this article quite interesting because what these machines and workers do on a daily basis is similar to what our software at Loqate does. Loqate’s Verify or Parse, Match and Format algorithm is designed to correct unstructured and unformatted address data and validate it against our reference data in the Global Knowledge Repository. We are all too familiar with addresses containing non-address or junk data yet we are still able to output a correct, formatted address globally. With all the different languages, character sets and address formats, it’s pretty cool that the Loqate Engine is able to accurately capture, verify and geocode addresses all over the world. At least these workers and machines at the US Post Office are dealing with only one address format. Try 240+!

Of the 1,000 entries received by the Rockefeller Foundation for their Next Century Innovation Award, Addressing the Unaddressed, have made it into the final 2 entries for the award which is based on the number of votes received between now and May 31st, 2013.

If Addressing the Unaddressed wins, they will then have enough money to give addresses to another quarter of a million people living in slums in India. This will allow these people to access social welfare entitlements, receive an identity card, vote, open a bank account and interact with utility companies and enable aid agencies access to the database so they are able to better serve the dwellers.

To quote Dr. Joan Clos, Executive Director, United Nations Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), “At UN-Habitat, we are convinced that everyone has the right to an address. If you do not have an address you do not officially exist. An Address is the key to a new life.”

Please vote for the Rockefeller and help us give these people a key to a new life.

To vote, click on http://bit.ly/Ygdcko (http://centennial.rockefellerfoundation.org/innovators/profile/addressing-the-unaddressed).

Note: Installation Manager is written using Java and requires a Java Runtime Environment 1.7 (JRE 1.7). In addition, if you have not installed the Loqate Java API Library as part of the Loqate Engine installation, you will need to install those Java API libraries in order for the Installation Manager to work. You will also need to be a registered user of our Support website in order to access the documentation at http://www.loqate.com/support/local-apis/installationmanager/.

Please email Loqate Support if you have any questions or issues running Installation Manager. Thank you and we look forward to hearing your feedback! Happy testing!

 LumenData to provide strategy, consulting, implementation, and integration services for Loqate technology

April 23, 2013 – San Bruno, CA – Loqate and LumenData proudly announce their partnership to provide complete, in-depth global location information in Enterprise Information Management products.  LumenData will provide consulting and integration services to deliver global address verification and geocoding implementation for the Loqate Engine and software in which Loqate components are integrated.  The partnership allows LumenData’s clients to purchase address libraries for use in conjunction with their address validation and data quality software and to easily maintain the libraries over time.  The primary focus of the relationship is to provide services for Oracle Enterprise Data Quality (EDQ), of which Loqate is a critical component.  These extensive services are currently available and are in use by clients.

Implementing global address data quality capabilities and integrating the Loqate Engine will provide LumenData’s clients with additional opportunities to drive revenue, reduce costs, mitigate risk, and enhance agility.

“The growing importance of location information makes implementing data quality systems a challenge for any organization”, said Nimish Mehta, CEO and Co-founder of LumenData.  “The ability of Loqate to meet this challenge on a global basis indicates that Loqate understands the requirements needed to meet the data quality challenges in any organization.  Together we can greatly benefit our clients.”

“Location information built around accurate, verified addresses is becoming increasingly important to global organizations,” said Martin Turvey, President and CEO of Loqate.  “Loqate and LumenData together will enable Oracle EDQ customers to easily and quickly meet their worldwide address challenges.  Working with a global leader in data management consulting services that has extensive experience and expertise across all stages of implementing data management solutions will enable new opportunities in our common customers.”

Almost all data has locations, and accurate locations power a wealth of business processes: Master Data Management (MDM), CRM, data quality, delivery of materials, goods, or services, fraud detection, insurance risk assessment, data analytics, store and territory planning, and much more.  All these areas can benefit from strong MDM capabilities.  New applications that harness the information in Big Data, location based services, customer analytics, and market intelligence need the accuracy and intelligence that only comes from great address quality.  The Loqate Engine and its components, Verify, Register, and Geocode, provide the ability to provide complete, in-depth global location information.

About LumenData

LumenData is a leading MDM consulting and product development firm with offices in Santa Clara, New York, Denver, and Bangalore.  The company leverages its unparalleled expertise to provide high-quality planning, implementation, integration, and maintenance services for Master Data Management, Data Quality, and Data Governance.  LumenData’s expertise spans financial services, retail, manufacturing, life sciences, and higher education, and other industries.  Clients include Bayer CropScience, Credit Suisse, Cricket Communications, Cummins, Citibank, Nature’s Bounty, PC Connection, Prudential, Thyssen-Krupp, University of Colorado, University of Utah, Weight Watchers, and more.  For more information, please visit LumenData at http://www.lumendata.com/.

About Loqate

Loqate Inc., the definitive source of everything location, can power applications with a combination of address capture, verification, and geocoding – all for 240+ countries.  Loqate corporate headquarters are in San Bruno, CA, USA.  The company, founded in 2009, sells its products as components that are leveraged by software vendors, service providers, and systems integrators.  Loqate has a focus on providing great technology along with unparalleled levels of support to clients and partners.  The Loqate Engine enables software vendors to significantly enhance the functionality and capability of their own product offerings.  For more information, see http://www.loqate.com.

The archive for this webinar is now available. Click here to view.

We all want clean, accurate, and correct address data. People, processes, and policies get in the way. Trying to obtain and keep high quality addresses for one country is hard enough. What do you do when you are faced with addresses in over 240 countries? Loqate has developed technology and products that enable organizations to raise the quality of one of their key assets, customer address data. Loqate addresses the issues that arise from different languages and character sets, over 130 different address formats worldwide, and many diverse sources of data.

What Attendees will learn:

• The issues concerning addresses confronting organizations as they extend their global reach
• The impact that increased address quality can have on customer satisfaction, customer retention, and revenue
• How global address verification and geocoding works
• The options and cost of integrating an address verification and geocoding engine with existing systems

Who should attend:

• Managers who depend on accurate address data to run their global businesses
• IT specialists who design, implement, and support customer-facing systems
• Integrators and consultants who help organizations implement CRM technology

To register visit TMCnet.com.

• Premise point geocoding for 55+ new countries
• Significant Search and Query improvements
• New Tomcat Java-based REST API for internal Web Service usage
• New Installation Manager currently in beta release

As usual with every quarterly release, information in the Loqate Global Knowledge Repository has been updated. The updates include:

• Reference Data = 249 countries
• Lexicons = 23 countries
• Context Rules = 3 countries

Improved processing is now available for the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Guam, and new countries. New searching and indexing capabilities are an important improvement delivered in this release.

To obtain the instructions to download the release including new and updated reference data, contact support@loqate.com.

The Complexities of a Descriptive Address

Let’s take the address: Juhu Tara Road, Opp. Theosophical Society, Juhu Beach, Mumbai, India 400 049 (this is a real address that I found for a hotel in India on the internet). It’s quite common in Indian addresses to find commentary about the surroundings as part of the address string (opposite, behind, next to etc.).

In this example, Loqate’s Verify was able to pull out the street name from within the extraneous information and verify it, despite the less meaningful data that came along with it:

A different vendor (we’ll call them Vendor B) was unable to identify the street (which is what the gray means):

Now let’s look at both Vendor claims about their Reference Data in Mumbai (keep in mind that this is the posted address of a hotel in a major city in India).

Loqate claims to support to the Thoroughfare (street) level in India. And indeed, in this example, Loqate’s accuracy code shows a V3 which is verified to the thoroughfare level.

Vendor B claims to support to the “A” level, which means “Steet, Building or Block coverage for major parts of the country”.  In this case, Vendor B did not support to Street, building or block in this major city.

Notice a few more things –

In the Loqate example, the data was input in a single block of UNSTRUCTURED data making data entry much simpler. Vendor B forced me to divide up the input into structured fields.

The Complexities of Another Language

Let’s take another example. This time we’ll use an example with a foreign character set.

Loqate is able to verify it and even geocode it to a premise point (V4 accuracy code).

Vendor B can’t find it, even though I entered it into the correct fields.

Vendor B claims to have “B” level support in Israel (Locality and postal code), yet even though a valid city was provided, it couldn’t find it. Vendor B also claims to support Hebrew:

Loqate has premise (House) level coverage in Israel and indeed verified this address, in Hebrew, to the house level as well as geocoded it.

We Need to Look at the Whole Picture

In summary, there are really three components that affect the ultimate result quality of a cleansed address:

1. The quality of the input address

• Does it have extraneous junk
• Is it in fields or unstructured
• Are things in the wrong place
• Level of completeness

2. The quality of the reference data

Which, remember, many people treat like the holy grail of DQ).

3. The quality of the software engine, and its ability to bridge the gap and find matches between 1 & 2 above (the input data and the reference data).

In my opinion, the capability of #3, the software engine, is really the key component to successful address data quality. This is not to say that you don’t need decent reference data, but even with the best reference data, if the engine can’t parse correctly, correct improper field placement of address components, ignore extraneous junk, read and transliterate foreign characters and deal with unstructured data, the end result will be inferior because the engine won’t be able to connect between the poor input data and the superb reference data.

So next time you talk to your favorite Data Quality vendor salesperson, let’s make that conversation about the whole package and not just the reference data!

March 12, 2013 – San Bruno, CA – Loqate today announced a partnership with Stibo Systems to deliver global address verification in Stibo System’s STEP MDM solution.  Adding global data quality capabilities with the addition of The Loqate Engine will provide additional opportunities for Stibo customers to drive revenue, reduce costs, mitigate risk, and enhance agility. The extensive address verification and geocoding for over 240 countries is available as an option to all Stibo customers immediately.

“Stibo Systems brings a 30-year history of helping industries manage their technical and master data needs on a global scale”, said Bjarne Hald, CTO of Stibo Systems.  Loqate understands the data quality requirements needed to support doing business globally. This partnership will create new opportunities to benefit our customers.”

“Like Stibo Systems, we have created technology for companies operating in the international arena,” said Martin Turvey, President and CEO of Loqate. “Loqate and Stibo together will enable the ability to capture, verify, and geocode any address worldwide in Stibo Systems’ STEP platform. Thinking globally and acting locally is at the core of both businesses. This commonality should drive strong benefits for the people that employ Loqate and Stibo products to drive their businesses forward.”

Almost all data has locations, and accurate locations power a wealth of business processes: Master Data Management, CRM. data quality, delivery of materials, goods or services, fraud detection, insurance risk assessment, data analytics, store and territory planning, and much more. All these areas can benefit from strong MDM capabilities. New applications that harness the information in Big Data, location based services, customer analytics, and market intelligence need the accuracy and intelligence that only comes from great address quality. The Loqate Engine and its components, Verify, Register, and Geocode provide the ability to provide complete, in-depth global location information.

About Stibo Systems

Stibo Systems gives data direction by providing organizations with a leading multidomain master data management (MDM) solution. Stibo Systems enables its customers to better manage enterprise intelligence on a global scale, improve sales, and quickly adjust to changes in business requirements. Stibo Systems’ STEP technology is a flexible, uniform MDM solution that provides a single trusted source of operational information for the entire enterprise. Stibo Systems is a subsidiary of the privately held Stibo A/S group. For more information, visit www.stibosystems.com.

About Loqate

Loqate Inc., the definitive source of everything location, can power applications with a combination of address capture, verification, and geocoding – all for 240+ countries. Loqate corporate headquarters are in San Bruno, CA, USA. The company, founded in 2009, sells its products as components that are leveraged by software vendors, service providers, and systems integrators. Loqate has a focus on providing great technology along with unparalleled levels of support to clients and partners. The Loqate Engine enables software vendors to significantly enhance the functionality and capability of their own product offerings. For more information, see www.loqate.com.

Loma Linda University Medical Center has made use of the concept of mapping a person’s health. The aim is to show how a person’s location affects the quality of their health. As early as next month, software will be available to map patients’ health status and their environments. Bill Davenhall, a former GIS manager at Esri, is one of the main proponents of geomedicine. After a heart attack he experienced which he felt may have been caused by environmental factors, it drove him to push Esri to build an app that integrates places a person has lived with a report of toxins found within three miles of these locations.

What’s the trade-off?

How helpful would it be for people with asthma to know what areas exacerbate their condition? How helpful would it be for people to obtain the information from the Esri app and share it with their doctors? In my opinion, very. But at what price? Are people willing to compromise their privacy and risk having private information shared with 3^rdparties in return for this cautionary knowledge? People may fear that this information could be used against them. For example, insurance companies could possibly deny them coverage if information about their conditions were disclosed or leaked. It is this delicate concern that developers of this type of software need to take into consideration.

In my humble opinion…

Despite the fact that there are these risks or causes for concern, I feel that it’s for the common good and welfare of the planet that these strides are being taken to discover where these problem areas are and in turn, educating people and sharing the knowledge. From the Loqate perspective, it is gratifying to see how our ability to provide higher quality address information in tandem with the latest GIS technology adds a powerful contribution to those with chronic conditions in need of this kind of information; information and knowledge that could potentially save lives.