Address Collection - How to Make Sense of Your Data
Address collection can be a daunting task. Whether you're collecting addresses for weddings, parties or holiday cards, it's important to have accurate data.
Having valid addresses saves businesses time and money. Incorrect addresses can lead to delays in delivery of mail, additional fees, and missed opportunities. Address verification tools can help cut down these costs by ensuring that addresses are properly entered.
ArcGIS Solutions for State and Local Government
Address collection is crucial for local governments. It is also a key component in geospatial management. However many governments have difficulties with managing authoritative address repositories. They need simple workflows to record the physical location early in the process of developing an address, standard map products that inform decision-makers and the public about the quality and accuracy of their addresses, as well as tools for sharing authoritative address with other agencies.
Local government employees use Esri solutions to meet these requirements. These pre-built maps and apps are designed to work with specific workflows, which makes it easy for local governments of all sizes and levels of expertise to adopt them for increased efficiency and greater insight.
Scott Oppmann is the State and Local Government Solutions Team Director at Esri. According to his team, solutions are organized in categories that reflect "the common needs of state and local government agencies." To view the complete list of capabilities available, click here.
Address Field Inventory for instance, comes with an array of tasks to assist you in creating an address layer based on a list or verified sites taken from an online form. This feature layers can then be used to generate USNG coordinates and a mailing address. Additionally to that, the solution allows you to split a road at a defined point, calculate municipal boundaries and update the characteristics of addresses in the master road name table.
Another illustration of an Esri solution is Managing Address Field Operations, designed to assist address authority personnel collect missing or inaccurate address information from external and internal stakeholders. It allows office staff assign tasks to their field employees to utilize the address crowdsourcing application on their mobile devices. They can then check the addresses they submit and take note of any new addresses they find while in the field. The information is automatically entered into the appropriate database tables to be processed and then published.
The solution also allows office staff to assign a task with the option of confirming an existing set of address data using a specific accuracy threshold, which helps them identify errors, such as duplicates and mismatched addresses in the database. This information can be imported into the master database to improve the data quality and improve its accuracy.
Reverse Geocode Geoprocessing tool
Whether you're looking for the exact location of a certain company or know which area is most lucrative, reverse geocoding can assist you to understand your data. Many mobile apps, including Uber and Lyft rely on reverse-geocoding to transform raw GPS coordinates into information drivers can understand. Retail chains employ it to study the habits of their customers when shopping, and urban planners can combine address data with the density of people to determine which areas to build public facilities.
Reverse Geocode is a tool that converts point locations within a feature class to addresses. It does this by searching for the nearest intersection or address in relation to distance. It can be used to reverse geocode one or more points or multiple points in the form of a batch. Its output is well-structured and able to be integrated into other systems or tools.
It allows both standard and custom formats for address data, such as the standardized attributes X, Y of a Point Address feature, as well as identifiers for POIs (Point of Interest). You can also specify the location type of the matching geometry--it can be a routing location or a side-of-street location that can be used to route or the rooftop parcel centroid of an address.
You can make use of the tool to create composite locators by connecting together two or more locators. If it is unable to locate the address using the local information, the resulting locator will rely on ArcGIS World Geocoding.
Reverse geocoding is costly, particularly when you're working with huge quantities of coordinates. You'll have to keep within Esri's free usage threshold--which is approximately 200 thousand requests each month--or you'll incur costs. You may also purchase a subscription to convert coordinates into addresses en masse.
It's important to lastly to confirm the accuracy and completeness of any address data you receive from your customers through reverse geocoding. This can be done by using an address verification API that is certified by CASS like PostGrid. This will ensure the addresses that you use for your direct mail campaigns can be delivered and to your customers.
Data Assistant Add-in
The Data Assistant addin contains a set of tools that can assist you in transferring data between different datasets that have different data structures. These tools can be used to perform many different tasks, including concatenating several sources into a single target field or dividing the string into several target fields.
To make use of the Data Assistant add-in, you must first install it. To do this simply click the Start button, select Control Panel, and then select Add or Remove programs. Uninstall Microsoft Data Assistant 1.0 by following the directions on the screen.
Once the Data Assistant addin is installed, it can be configured to create the source/target configuration files. You can then load or change data using this file. The Data Mapping tool includes a number of methods for converting data to different formats and handling special characters.
To find out more about the Data Assistant add-in, including how it can assist you with your address collection needs, read how to make use of the Data Assistant add-in. This solution explains how to work with the Data Assistant add-in and how to perform workflows to collect and update parcel information and populate layers of community.
Data Validation Tool
A reliable tool for verifying addresses is an effective tool that helps companies maintain accuracy of their data and operational efficiency. It ensures that the correct address is used to mail and invoices go to the right customer and marketing campaigns are sent to the right audience. When selecting a validation software be sure to choose one with extensive coverage of all countries and seamless integrations into business processes. Be aware of the pricing structure and select tools that have a high return on investment.
It is crucial to make sure here that the initial entering addresses is accurate whether it's written on paper forms in the retail store, or electronically when you check out online or the integration of data from CRM systems. This will decrease the chance of errors in shipping and return and ultimately boost customer satisfaction and loyalty. This requires more than just using a traditional postal code or ZIP code lookup; it involves a process of thorough address verification and collection.
The process starts with an advanced data parsing tool that breaks down the address into its constituent elements, including street name, city name, and postal code. The tool then compares these components with commercial databases to ensure their accuracy. It then standardizes an address to conform with the global postal standards. For example, it converts extended forms into standard abbreviations or capitalization.
The address is then geocoded in order to verify its location. This step is especially important for businesses who operate globally. It helps them calculate shipping costs accurately, and to be transparent to customers. This helps reduce the risk of costly delays resulting from incomplete or inaccurate information. A robust geocoding API will aid businesses in complying with international shipping regulations and avoid customs issues.
Once the address is verified, it's automatically updated in CRM systems and enterprise resource planning systems, ensuring that every contact with a customer or shipment delivery is based on accurate data. Precise data on addresses can also speed up logistics processes by simplifying logistics, procurement and delivery of services.