DOCUMENT Magazine - April 2008 - (Page 20)

P D PRODUCTION & DELIVERY & a s the costs of postage increases, highvolume transactional mailers will need to reevaluate their automation practices. Looking towards address cleansing of your mailing lists can bring clarity, as well as discounts, to your cash cycle. Addressing Your Addresses t Advanced postal optimization tools to embrace USPS discounts | By Todd Haycock includes the standard address correction for ZIP+4 and delivery point encoding. It also requires Delivery Point Validation (DPV) and Locatable Address Conversion System (LACSLink) updates to all addresses to qualify for discounted postal rates. >> LACSLink Processing: LACSLink gives mailers an automated method of obtaining new addresses when a 911 emergency system has been implemented and applying these address corrections prior to mailing. Although 911 address conversions normally involve changing rural-style locatable addresses to city-style addresses, in certain instances, conversions may result in the renaming or renumbering of existing city-style addresses. There are currently more than ﬁve million converted addresses in the LACS ﬁle. LACSLink helps reduce undeliverable mail by providing the most current address information for matches made to the LACSLink ﬁle. >> Address Element Correction (AEC) and AEC II: AEC helps minimize the amount of manual processing needed to turn inaccurate addresses into automation-compatible mail that can be matched using CASS Certiﬁed address matching software. AEC either ﬁxes the problem addresses by correcting address deﬁciencies or identiﬁes them as potentially undeliverable. Addresses become candidates for AEC when they cannot be matched to a ZIP+4 Code because they have either missing or incorrect address elements. Mailers that have ﬁrst processed their ﬁles through AEC now have the opportunity to process them through AEC II. This new generation of AEC uses what the USPS refers to as “Delivery Force Knowledge,” consisting of USPS employees at the local delivery unit level who The most recent postal rate case, implemented in May of last year, included several postal reforms designed to encourage mailers to improve postal efﬁciencies through automated address list management. FirstClass Mailers that want to qualify for the most favorable automation rates must make sustained investments in time, staff and technology as the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) continues to raise the bar for postal optimization. Much of the emphasis on recent postal optimization initiatives has been on address list cleansing, particularly technologies that identify and mitigate undeliverable mail before it enters the postal stream. Emerging also are tools to add address intelligence for improved visibility of each mailpiece, end-to-end delivery performance measurement and data consolidation. Improving mailing list quality reaps beneﬁts beyond postage savings. Costs associated with manual processing or forwarding of address changes, while often hidden, can be considerable. Manual handling also signiﬁcantly increases the probability of data entry errors that can result in undeliverables, thereby, prolonging the cash cycle and potentially eroding customer satisfaction. CASS Certiﬁcation USPS Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS) Certiﬁed software is available to all mailers from USPS-approved software providers. Processing addresses through CASS Certiﬁed address correction and encoding software is required for automation discounted postal rates. This software corrects and standardizes address components to increase mailing efﬁciency and cost-effectiveness while ensuring that mailings reach their ﬁnal destination. Today’s CASS Certiﬁed software 20 document april.08 www.DOCUMENTmedia.com http://www.DOCUMENTmedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Document Magazine - April 2008

Document Magazine - April 2008 Contents Editor's View The Research Desk The Response Center BPM: Improving the Way You Process Contributing Writers Mapping Out Performance Build the Context Before You Move into the House of ECM Taking On the Big 3 The Human Connection Addressing Your Addresses Don't Call Us, We'll Call You The Mulitplying Image Recognizing Accuracy New Products Calendar Advertisers

Document Magazine - April 2008

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