Having non-standardized addresses is an ongoing problem for businesses. It costs them money for shipping and mailing expenses, and customers experience delays due to inaccurate deliveries. Whether you’re dealing with addresses from your current customer base or prospecting new leads, it’s essential to clean and preprocess your data for standardized outputs. This helps you reduce fraudulent activity and saves time that your team can use on more productive tasks.
There are several ways to standardize your address data. You can choose to do it manually using software such as Excel or use an Address Standardization API that makes it easy to standardize and verify addresses in bulk, on insert, or both. Using an API is more efficient than manual editing and can save you a lot of time while still providing the same results.
Once your addresses are standardized, they will be easier to deduplicate. You can also easily spot spelling and formatting errors. Words like street, avenue, and suite can be interpreted differently by humans which is why it’s important to have an accurate standard for these words.
There are many open source and commercial address standardization tools available. Some are web-based and others are software that you can install on your systems. Some use a JavaScript library like Placekey or usps-webtools to verify and lookup addresses, while others utilize the R programming language to automate processes and improve data quality. Ultimately, it’s up to you and your business processes to decide which solution is the best fit.
SITES WE SUPPORT
Comments