Mailing Systems Technology - May/June 2008 - (Page 34)

untouchable by automation, especially for small to medium-sized mail centers. Large mail centers have had the option of acquiring universal sorters, but the investments involved have been too great for smaller centers. Yet, very few large mail centers have found it possible to automate incoming mail, even in the face of rising labor costs. This is especially intriguing since advanced, automated postal systems have been effectively applied by large, national posts to process outgoing mail for decades. The reason for this discrepancy lies in the speciﬁcs of the address block on the incoming mailpieces. While the structure of a postal address block is strictly deﬁned, incoming mail structure is diverse and may diverge not only for diﬀerent companies, but even within the same one. Therefore, it is diﬃcult to ﬁnd universal software that can reliably and eﬃciently process the entire spectrum of semi-structured addresses. The concept of locating and reading mandatory address ﬁelds within the address block, which proved to be successful for postal addresses, failed or showed to be ineﬃcient in the case of incoming mail. This application required software based on a diﬀerent concept to reach high recognition results. Nowadays, there are products exploiting a new concept in reading incoming mail addresses. They are speciﬁcally designed to automatically recognize the wide variety of incoming mail and are intended to support highvolume mail processing facilities. Such products can sort any type of inbound company mail up to the depth required by the particular company. They are ﬂexible and can easily adapt to any address structure and ﬁeld type deﬁning the destination. Advanced functionality allows customers to successfully implement the products for the most challenging tasks of incoming mail sorting, which previously could not be solved. New technologies are able to locate the correct destination address block on the image of an envelope, ﬂat-size mailpiece or parcel. The software automatically parses and recognizes the ﬁelds within this address block. It is designed to deal with diﬀerent address block structures and automatically reads the variety of ﬁelds and formats that may be encountered on a mailpiece. The ﬁelds may be located in diﬀerent lines within the address block, may have diﬀerent preﬁxes or have no preﬁx at all and may be present within an address block or skipped. The diﬀerentiator of this new approach is its ability to look beyond each particular ﬁeld within the address block. The new products allow ﬁelds to be combined in groups, ﬁnds groups of ﬁelds that are stably present in the address block, sets complex connections between ﬁelds within the group, deﬁnes priorities that describe the importance of the ﬁeld in determining a potential recipient of the mail and, ﬁnally, builds a chain that leads to the proper mail recipient. applied to Latin-based addresses. It opens new opportunities to implement this technology for a broader range of applications going beyond incoming mail processing. An important part of the successful reading of handwritten and machine-printed addresses belongs to contextual information — or utilizing a database describing company-speciﬁc address Each company has a speciﬁc address structure. structure, ﬁelds specifying a destination and a In small companies, it may be limited to just list of potential addressees. The database should the name of a recipient, followed by the com- contain the most comprehensive data, specifypany address. If a company structure is more ing valid ﬁelds and their values for a particular complex, the internal address may include company. Fields on a mailpiece are recognized such ﬁelds as mail stop, department name and and compared against records from the datapost oﬃce box. base to ﬁnd a single record that But real-life mailmatches the mailpiece. There pieces often go are also mechanisms that help beyond the typiresolve the ambiguities inherFor a company cal address block ent to this task, which is diﬃreceiving up to structure. There cult to formalize. For example, are addresses that a mechanism that sets priorities may include unhelps resolve situations when a usual ﬁelds, spedatabase has multiple records of mail per day, ciﬁc to a particular with several ﬁelds matching the about 600 are company (for exsame values. Alias mechanisms ample, drop code help to resolve the ambiguity either delayed or division code). caused by the fact that values Big companies of the same ﬁelds within the or misplaced may have a hieraraddress may often be written chical mail stop or diﬀerently. For example, the department name ﬁrst name William can be also structure (mulwritten as Bill, Will, Willy, etc. tiple nesting mail The department name “Marstops or departments) or a few mail stops, or keting” may be spelled as “Mktg” or “Market.” department structures existing in parallel. Despite the various ways they may be written, all these words have the same meaning and, as The universal language mechanisms used by in- such, describe the same destination speciﬁed in coming mail processing software allow for ﬂex- a database in a standard unique form. ibility in describing and working with a variety of formats and cases. Ready-to-use blocks or All of these features and other powerful mechapredeﬁned ﬁelds can provide a user-friendly deﬁ- nisms allow for the successful resolution of nition of particular address structures in these incoming addresses. The software can be easily systems. Predeﬁned ﬁelds are often encountered integrated with various types of sorting equipon mailpieces and imply standard information ment and adapted to a company’s business about ﬁeld structure, ﬁeld preﬁx or suﬃx and ex- needs and requirements. Automated incoming pected ﬁeld values. The software contains knowl- mail processing brings signiﬁcant beneﬁts to edge about such ﬁelds, enabling it to locate them organizations that implement it. The technology on diﬀerent mailpieces. It also oﬀers mechanisms makes sure that incoming mail gets to the right that allow for ﬂexibility in modifying standard place faster, reducing document processing time ﬁelds, so they meet the requirements for a par- and raising the eﬃciency of business processes, ticular address format. In those situations when while improving quality of customer service. an address includes ﬁelds that cannot be deﬁned using the predeﬁned ﬁeld types, the customer Dr. Tatiana Vazioulina works in product mancan deﬁne ﬁelds with unique characteristics. agement and marketing at Parascript, LLC. The technology does not have country-speciﬁc Email Tatyana.vazulina@parascript.com, call address structure constraints and can be readily 303-381-3106 or visit www.parascript.com. 100 PIECES ANNUALLY. 34 MAY-JUNE 2008 | WWW.MAILINGSYSTEMSTECHNOLOGY.COM http://www.parascript.com http://www.mailsystemstechnology.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Mailing Systems Technology - May/June 2008

Mailing Systems Technology - May/June 2008 Contents Editor’s Note Peer to Peer It’s an Inside Job Greening Your Mail Center Adopting an Automated Document Factory Intelligent Mail and Address Quality 7 Steps to Combat “Do Not Mail” A Successful Resolution Q&A with Dan G. Blair, Chairman, Postal Regulatory Commission The Intelligent Mail Barcode Developing High-Performance Teams Simple Strategies to Save You Money A Powerful Social Network With Change, Comes Opportunity Increasing the Deliverability of Mail Kate’s Slate Products & Services People of Distinction Advertiser Index Sho Time

Mailing Systems Technology - May/June 2008

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