Group 1's international data quality product set should encourage the marketing activities of organizations that have historically been reluctant to tackle many of the foreign markets because of the complexity and the poor quality of international address data.
— Mike Schiff
Current Analysis
CODE-1 Plus International™ Features and Benefits
Country-Specific Address Formatting
Some postal administrations will discard improperly formatted mail, even if the address data is correct. CODE-1 Plus International™ returns address data in the specific format and casing used in a given country.
CODE-1 Plus International™ has built-in intelligence that accommodates the many different address styles around the world, formatting data to meet the exact requirements of each country. For example:
- English–123 Main Street
- Hispanic/Latin–Street Main 123
- French–123 Street Main
- Germanic/Dutch–Mainstreet 123
Exclusive Postal Data
CODE-1 Plus International™ combines data from the postal administration, industry sources and the Universal Postal Union’s POST*CODE database, which contains locality and street-level data for United Nations member countries.
Global Address Correction
CODE-1 Plus International™ provides address validation, correction and formatting for over 220 countries and dependencies worldwide, with street-level address data from over 100 countries. CODE-1 Plus International™ provides different levels of validation and correction depending on the location. Countries have been grouped into three categories:
- Category A countries are those whose postal administrations provide referential data which includes such components as street, house numbers, unit numbers PO Boxes, cities, localities, postcodes, states, and counties.
- Category B countries also provide postal data, but do not include street or PO Box information.
- Category C countries are those for whom no postal data has been provided. CODE-1 Plus International™ has incorporated tables identifying the various formats pertaining to each of those countries and validates the address data based on pattern recognition.
Special Characters Including Diacritics
Special characters, such as the German umlaut, present their own problems if your systems are not equipped to deal with extended character sets. CODE-1 Plus International™ supports the main extended western character code pages, which include extended special character sets, effectively processing data from a large number of languages and countries:
- English
- French
- German
- Spanish
- Italian
- Portuguese
- Dutch
- Danish
- Flemish
- Swedish
- Norwegian
- Finnish
- Flemish
When special characters have been lost, transliterated or improperly coded, CODE-1 Plus International™ can make the necessary corrections based on the specific country. In cases where the special character is to be omitted, the correct non-diacritic spelling is provided. (For example, Köln=Koeln.)
Precise Gender Coding
CODE-1 Plus International™ assigns gender codes based on naming conventions within a given country. For example, mailers must be able to identify that Jean in the United Kingdom is female and Jean in France is male.
Multiple Output Formats
CODE-1 Plus International™ provides multiple output styles, including fixed-field address components and country-specific label formats. Fixed fields allow for more efficient organization of data while country-specific formats provide the ability to generate the correct address label format for any country. By utilizing these powerful features, you can dramatically reduce duplicate data and create more customer-friendly correspondence.
Integrated Data Workflow
CODE-1 Plus International™ comes with Dispatcher4™, providing you the flexibility to manage all of your data quality and direct mail applications through a single user interface. Dispatcher4TM delivers the power of the Pitney Bowes Group 1 solutions in a Microsoft Windows environment, offering you end-to-end control and simplicity.
Dispatcher4™ provides the flexibility to manage jobs ranging from a single application, to those incorporating multiple Group 1 solutions or third-party technologies. Built-in Wizards and online help make it easy to administer any task, from job set-up and processing to results analysis.
Wide Range of Platform and Operating Systems
CODE-1 Plus International™ supports a wide variety of platforms and operating systems, including:
- IBM Mainframe (VSE/IMS/ZOS/ZOS.e)
- UNIX
- Windows
- iSeries
- DEC