65 blog posts tagged "Address verification"

This June, Klarna and PayPal made some big moves into the physical card space. Klarna teamed up with Visa to launch a BNPL (buy-now-pay-later) debit card, while PayPal’s partnership with Mastercard aims to help the brand make the jump from phone to wallet. Coupled with other wave-making announcements like Stripe’s all-in moves on AI and stablecoins, PayPal and Klarna’s announcements emphasize a broader industry shift as fintechs transform from niche digital players to comprehensive financial services platforms.

When you think about theme parks, you probably think of roller coasters, long lines, and $18 turkey legs. But behind all the fun is a surprising need for something a little less flashy yet still gorgeous as all get out—rock-solid address validation (or address verification, we use them interchangeably). Yes, we’re talking about making sure that the addresses entered by guests are real, valid, and standardized. Why? Because today’s theme parks operate like data-rich, customer-first ecosystems.

Address verification is an essential tool that property insurance companies should use when analyzing risk. Perils are often associated with potential hazards located on or near a property, but they can also be tied to the general area a property is in. Verifying addresses ensures that a policy falls within a covered area, which is vital for both an insurance company and their customers. To start, the insurance policy premium needs to be priced for the property's actual location. Otherwise, a premium could be mispriced because of a misclassified risk area.

International healthcare is complex. Inaccurate or unverifiable international addresses make it worse by delaying claims, increasing compliance risk, opening the door to fraud, and frustrating members. Healthcare companies need global healthcare address verification that’s scalable. Here's how to get there. Why global address verification is especially complex for healthcare companiesHealthcare depends on addresses. While just one datapoint, addresses are foundational to so many critical healthcare management processes and vital to get correct.

When it comes to address verification, getting a match every time might seem like the goal. After all, a system that always returns a validated address must be working perfectly, right?Wrong. If your address verification API always forces a match, no matter what, it’s not being helpful. It’s actually introducing risk. In fact, getting a “no match” result can frequently be the smarter, safer outcome. Let’s talk about why. What is a "no match" telling you?A “no match” means the input address doesn’t align with any known, valid address in the reference database.

Ask most product owners about their address data, and they’ll probably tell you that “it’s good enough. ” But when it comes to address data integrity, the word “enough” should give you serious pause. When it comes to address data, “close enough” is how businesses end up with wasted marketing spend, compliance headaches, failed deliveries, and policies that don’t hold up. It doesn’t matter if you're underwriting insurance on a home, scheduling a broadband install, or mailing a benefits enrollment kit—accuracy isn’t a nice-to-have.

In the world of address validation, not all providers stick to the script. Some go rogue. And while that might work for improv geniuses like Robin Williams or even our own Brady Amundson, when your verification tools start improvising results, creating fictional addresses, and hoping you don’t notice… well, it's like watching a movie adaptation of your favorite book and thinking, “Wait… they burned down the Burrow?!?” (Harry Potter fans, I’m still mad. )If your address verification tool is delivering results that feel more like fan fiction than factual data, and geolocating “validated” addresses in the middle of lakes, it might be time to reconsider the cast.

“Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop. ” Time Magazine (1966). This statement is laughable in today’s society. In the last 60 years, online purchasing has become a daily event, and more online purchases are being made every year. In fact, ​In 2024, total ecommerce sales in the United States reached approximately $1. 19 trillion, marking an 8. 1% increase from 2023. Notably, ecommerce accounted for 16. 1% of total retail sales in 2024, up from 15. 3% the previous year. These purchases aren't just small dollars anymore.

Getting deliveries right starts with getting addresses right. In today’s “I want it now“ world of online shopping, customers expect their orders to show up on time and without any hiccups. And the stakes are high: 87% of customers trust brands with excellent customer service. That’s a big deal when it comes to loyalty. But when something goes wrong — like a package sent to the wrong place, delayed by days, or lost in shipping limbo — trust takes a nosedive. Frustrated customers are less likely to come back and more likely to spread the word (the not-so-good kind).

Ever feel like your address data is cursed?Customers claim their packages never showed up. Your CRM swears by an address that doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, your checkout form mysteriously rejects a perfectly valid street name like it's possessed. Healthcare claim denials, failed insurance verifications, suspicious fintech delays—something strange is definitely going on. Instead of avoiding or running away terrified, we’re investigating the eerie and mysterious on Paranormal Day, May 3. We tip our foil hats to Charles Fort, the original chronicler of the weird and unexplained, and investigate a real threat to your data systems: unverified addresses.

Healthcare fraud isn’t just an occasional headache—it’s a $20 billion-a-year black hole draining financial institutions. And that’s just the fraud we know about. As healthcare systems become more complex, fraudsters are also getting smarter, faster, and more creative at exploiting vulnerabilities, especially in address verification. The healthcare industry is an easy target. Medical data can be more valuable than credit card numbers, billing systems are a tangled mess, and the sheer complexity of transactions creates endless opportunities for fraud to slip through unnoticed.

Address autocomplete is a powerful tool for improving form completions and ensuring users select real, deliverable addresses at entry. However, to maintain long-term data integrity and enhance address-related insights, address verification is a necessary complement. Here’s why:1. Gain up to 55 points of metadata per verified addressAutocomplete provides real-time address suggestions, while address verification appends additional metadata. Address verification enhances each address with up to 55 points of data, such as:ZIP-9 level accuracy geocoordinates (rooftop accuracy also available)ZIP+4 CodesResidential Delivery Indicator (RDI) to identify residential vs.

We know it’s not New Year's anymore, but we can still push for improvement and efficiency in our lives. Maybe you’ve lapsed on that goal to be healthier or slightly slipped on your new reading and writing regimen. No worries. Not only are we here to remind you to KEEP GOING on whatever goals you have, but we’re also here to give you an easy-to-implement solution that will create shipping efficiency and stop sending packages into the void. I mean, we’re assuming you don’t like wasting money. If you do… that’s how we’re different.

Let's start with a number that should make every hospital administrator do a double take: $17. 4 million. That’s how much the average hospital loses annually—just from denied claims due to patient misidentification. This isn’t from equipment costs, not from staffing shortages, and not even from insurance negotiations—just from keeping bad patient data. Surely, our forms aren’t that bad. (Yes, they are, and stop calling me Shirley. )But here’s the reality: According to the 2016 Ponemon Misidentification Report, 30% of hospital claims get denied, and over a third of those denials are caused by inaccurate or incomplete patient information.

Healthcare is experiencing a dramatic shift in how patient information is stored and managed. Electronic medical records (EMRs) and electronic health records (EHRs) have become the new standard, driven by two powerful forces: everyone has mobile devices and the increase in the human population. A growing problem with clean address data in EMRs and EHRsWhile EMRs and EHRs offer amazing accessibility and storage capabilities (way better than a filing cabinet), they've also exposed a critical weakness in many healthcare organizations: address data quality.

Address verification isn't just a nice-to-have feature—it's a critical business function that directly impacts your bottom line and customer satisfaction. The impact of reliable address verification extends throughout your entire operation. Every returned package or piece of mail represents wasted shipping costs, lost time, and potential damage to customer relationships. Most importantly, it's an entirely preventable problem. When addresses are verified before shipping, businesses see immediate improvements in delivery success rates and significant reductions in associated costs.

There are plenty of address data solutions in the sea. You might need to let them off the hook if:Their data accuracy is sufferingToo many false positivesSpotty data availability (lack of international support? Beuller?)Off-the-mark geocoding (not truly rooftop-level accurate)Missing data enrichment (RDI, FIPS, unique ID, secondary addresses, etc. )They don’t flirt nicely (or at all) with your existing systemsThey don’t have an accurate address autocomplete solutionYour relationship with them has become robotic and mundane (When you need help, you have to talk to a robot instead of a real person for support… ew.

In 2024, it’s estimated that online purchases, or ecommerce, made up more than 20% of global retail, with 2. 77 billion people shopping online, and those numbers will only get bigger in the following years. With so much online shopping, more goods and services are being shipped than ever before—including during the height of the Sears catalog in 1970. Side note: If you’re reading this and you don’t know what the Sears catalog was or how much it impacted the average home, it’s worth taking a trip down memory lane and seeing how your elders used to shop.

Shipping optimization is rapidly evolving the retail landscape with advancements in shipping technology. From using robotics to increase efficiency and protect workers from dangerous jobs to autonomous vehicles and drones taking items to hard-to-reach areas, shipping has drastically evolved from the infancy of ecommerce in the 1990s. Sure, the 90s are currently having a pop culture resurgence, but your customers don’t want their shipping experience to go retro. One of the most impactful ways to ship effectively is to use a Shipping Execution System (SES).

The following is based on a true story. Some of the names and relationships have been changed to protect the anonymity of individuals and companies. However, the numbers are 100% accurate. In 2023, I wanted to mail some really fancy cards to 165 businesses. I collected their addresses by asking for them or finding them in their online listing and collected them all in a neat little row. Then, I went a step further and ran these addresses through Smarty's bulk address validation tool. Everything was set and perfect.

In healthcare, the havoc an inaccurate address can wreak on your financial results is significant in more ways than one, and the boost in overall profitability from maintaining a clean address database is equally worth noting. Accurate healthcare address validation improves operational efficiency, patient engagement, and compliance and builds revenue to heights that couldn’t be met without it. Here’s what we’ll be covering:Healthcare address validation pros and consCon: Increased claim denials and organizational costsPro: Reduced claim denials and reprocessing costsCon: Increasing patient match error ratesPro: Improved patient matching and data qualityCon: Complicated billing and collections processesPro: Streamlined billing and collections capabilitiesCon: Exposure to legal liabilitiesPro: Enhanced regulatory compliance and risk aversionCon: Misplaced market strategyPro: Data-driven decision-making and market insightsEpilogue: Avoiding the pain (see our summarized financial savings)Healthcare address validation pros and consThere’s a pro and a con associated with having (or not having 🫣) accurate address data in your healthcare systems.

Smarty's US Street Address API and International Street Address API provide a lot of output. Things like Carrier Route, Congressional District, geocode, eLOT sequence, timezone, and much much more are available with every address check. But there may be points of data that you’re not entirely sure what it means or how to use it. In a recent webinar, we brought Lyle Durland, Head of Support, and Jeffrey Duncan, Technical Product Manager, together to outline some of the more useful points of data, and how to interpret it.

We love ninjas!Yes, we do!We love ninjas!How about you? crickets We know they’re out there. BUT TODAY IS THEIR DAY, so even though these sneaky, highly-trained martial artists aren’t going to join our cheering throngs, we’ll celebrate them on National Day of the Ninja. Why?Because we’re ninja masters (sort of). We’re really good at solving every address issue just like we believe our fellow shadow warriors would—silently running in the background, solving challenges with unparalleled speed and accuracy.

Here is a day to consider protecting sensitive data, whether it's names, addresses, social security numbers, telephone numbers, email addresses, driver's license numbers, passport numbers, financial data, or biometric records! Today's the day to double-check your systems and ensure accurate information management. It’s Computer Security Day, baby! 2-factor authentication? Check. Fingerprint and facial recognition? Check. Passwords over 15 characters long with alternating capital and lowercase letters, symbols, and numbers? Check!Your IT team is metaphorically making you double-pull on that yellow tab to ensure you’re strapped in securely.

HO HO HO! Merry Christmas, my dear friends,I’m taking a minute from my busy toy-making and list-checking (twice) schedule to write you a letter. I know, I know, usually, it’s you and your lovely children writing ME letters, but I’ve loved seeing your efforts to get on the nice list this year and want to give you a peek into how I make the magic happen. Because you made my heart feel warm even at the North Pole, I’m sharing the answer to my most asked question: "How do I deliver billions of gifts to people all over the world?” The magic behind my sleigh rides? Hint: it's not the reindeer… I use Smarty.

The customer experience (CX) landscape is changing faster than a squirrel on espresso 🐿️☕, driven by technological advancements, consumer expectation evolution, and the need for all things to become digital. Maybe you wanna keep up with the change. That’s great. Or even better, you want to get ahead of all the other guys. That’s where Smarty comes in. Looking at what the future of customer experience will be like in 2025 and beyond (supported by relevant statistics and insights from various studies we’ve collected), address autocomplete and verification play a bigger role than you might suspect.

Webinar recap: The holiday sales race is almost on, and if you’re not prepared with your checkout game plan, you might be left behind with a sea of cart abandonments and “Where’s my order?” calls. But fear not! We recently held a webinar with address data experts Caroline Roweton and Brent Francom to talk about the ways bad address data can WRECK your holliday sales bump. They covered 7 ways you can use address data tools like autocomplete and address verification to crush the competition faster than a Black Friday doorbuster crowd will crush your beautiful holiday displays.

If you’re here, you appreciate a good horror movie, especially around Halloween time. There are many different subgenres of scary movies: slasher, found footage, psychological horror, supernatural horror, monster, folklore, zombie, gothic fiction, paranormal fiction, and the list goes on and on for a frighteningly long time. One thing all horror movies have in common is a scary setting. Maybe the trees are creepy and dead. Perhaps the house is rotting from the inside out. Sometimes, the location has historical significance with real and traumatic events.

Nestled snugly in Orem, Utah, address experts huddle in a circle to hear the cautionary tale of the curse of the wrong address. The lights dim, and a hush falls among the group as the flashlight beam fractures in two, lighting the sides of an older man’s face. He clears his throat and begins…Just days after Melissa Darnitall’s 17th birthday, a Victorian house went up for sale in the quaint town of Rolling Hills. Being historians by trade and visiting the city every year to experience what her mother called “the classic Halloween experience,” Melissa’s parents jumped to buy the property.

Everybody in ecommerce, marketing, or sales knows that it’s not just about the 1st sale–you want customers to come back—a lot. On the surface level, it seems fairly simple to understand why. #MoreMoney 💸Return customers liked their first interaction with your company and product so much, they’ve returned to purchase from you a second time. There’s no set schedule to when they’ll return again, and they may only make one more purchase. Repeat customers are loyal customers who keep coming back again and again.

Remember that phrase we all used in middle school, “Well if you love it so much, why don’t you marry it?” Well, we couldn’t agree more. Address data and insurance claims have been partners in an ever-evolving landscape of technology and property for years. Insurance claims rely on geocoding to find the exact location, and property data is used to assess the property's condition and attached amenities before losses. Efficiently deploying adjusters and accurately assessing damage is impossible without accurate address data.

We had a sit-down with Smarty crew members, Caroline Roweton, Associate Product Manager, and Landon Fackrell, Software Engineer, and delved into Smarty's innovative new Excel plugin. This powerful tool makes address validation easier than ever, allowing users to clean and verify their address data directly within Excel. With a focus on simplicity and efficiency, Caroline and Landon talked about the features and benefits of the plugin, demonstrating how it can save time and enhance data accuracy without any need for coding.

For underwriting efficiencies and commercial insurance success, the accuracy and reliability of data are crucial. Accurate data improves the risk assessment process and optimizes the overall workflow, saving both time and money. Leveraging Smarty's high-quality address data solutions, precise rooftop geocoding, address verification with PUIDs, and address autocomplete provides a significant advantage in improving insurance underwriting processes. The significance of a single rooftop geocoding vendorTraditional geocoding cascades pose challenges.

The U. S. homeowner’s insurance segment is facing unprecedented challenges, marked by the worst underwriting results since at least 2000. According to a recent report by AM Best, the segment experienced a staggering $15. 2 billion underwriting loss in 2023, more than double the losses seen in the previous year. They credit this dramatic increase in insured losses primarily to population migration into areas where weather-related events occur more frequently, coupled with rising urbanization and development in regions susceptible to natural perils.

Up until now, SmartyKey®, a persistent unique identifier for all 210+ million addresses in Smarty’s database, has only been available to customers who purchased US Master Address List or geocoding products. We’re happy to announce that, as of today, it's also available at no extra cost with US Address Verification. Yippee!But … what is SmartyKey?SmartyKey is the persistent, unique identifier of your dreams. It remains constant through address changes and is available for USPS and non-USPS addresses.

Don’t panic. We’re not telling you to set up your Christmas lights in July or tune into your favorite holiday station. We’re not crazy here (mostly). But also, do your thang. What we ARE saying is that if you’re in ecommerce, you know just as well as Smarty does that you have to start prepping for those big holidays months in advance. Today is as good as any to see how setting up the right real-time address capabilities, like suggesting verified customer addresses as they type, can get your business in the black on Black Friday.

March 18 marks a bit of an awkward holiday: Awkward Moments Day. It's a day that celebrates those times that make you cringe, moments that make you face-palm, and stories that wake you up at 4 in the morning thinking, "Ugh! Why did I do that?" Although these moments can be uncomfortable, it's helpful to remember that everyone has them, and if they say they don't … We know they’re lying. It's also helpful to remember that these embarrassing stories can help us learn and do better the next time around.

Webinar recap: In a recent webinar, we showed how address data tools help managers improve business performance in the following areas:Network PlanningAsset ManagementCustomer Acquisition and RetentionData BlendingMail and Parcel DeliveryFraud Reduction1. Network planningAccurate address data plays a critical role in overcoming network planning challenges. We presented solutions at each of the following steps in the network planning process: Clean existing address data with US Address VerificationKeep incoming data clean with US Address AutocompleteMap all addresses using our US Master Address List and hyper-accurate US Rooftop GeocodingAdd context to maps with enriched US Property DataAnalyze, get spatial insights, and make confident business decisions 2.

In the fast-paced and competitive world of telecommunications, where high customer expectations and intense rivalry prevail, the strategic use of address data intelligence, including geocoding and address verification, is increasingly essential. For professionals in the telecom sector, understanding and utilizing these tools can significantly streamline operations, enhance customer satisfaction, and drive business growth. This article delves into how Smarty's address data solutions address common pain points in the telecom industry.

Why accurate addresses matter to healthcare professionalsThe healthcare system typically relies on human entry for its data entry. Whether the information is added by the customer, a receptionist, a nurse, or even a doctor, there are a lot of areas for the information to be misentered. Not only that, but hospital staff members frequently edit or enter additional information following the patient's first visit. The constant editing and entering of data by a human results in more than just a tiny typo now and again.

Did you miss our recent webinar on how to use our new Google Sheets and Excel plugins for address validation? Don't worry; we've got you covered. This blog post provides an in-depth summary, highlighting essential functionalities, setup processes, and answers to some pertinent questions raised during the webinar. The basicsWe want to make it easier for businesses to validate addresses and retrieve necessary data efficiently. While we do have a bulk validation tool that can be accessed as a demo or a full tool, we find that most people are already working with address data in a spreadsheet form, usually in Excel.

Lost packages equal lost revenue. It’s a simple equation—if USPS or another delivery service can't deliver your products to the listed address, you’re likely out the cost of the item and the shipping, and you might even have to pay a return fee. However, one simple addition to your workflow can get your balance sheet back to black—address verification. Use a full address validation service that includes secondary address data like apartment unit numbers to cleanse your delivery list. Clean address data helps you reduce costs from misdeliveries, delays, lost mail, returned mail, reshipments, and change of address fees.

Your business generates data with every digital ad you run, every purchase order, every promotional mailing, and every customer survey you do. And every time one campaign wraps up, another starts. Developing a solid database cleansing and consolidation strategy can help prevent a database full of holes and information gaps. Why does database cleansing matter? Your revenue will diminish if you rely on bad data to make strategic business decisions. In our ebook, 5 Ways Companies Use Address Verification to Improve Business Results, we discuss how to use address verification software to cleanse databases and merge datasets.

PROVO, Utah--Smarty, a leader in address data intelligence, today announced that it has been named an industry leader, receiving 22 awards and top honors across address verification and e-commerce tools categories in G2's Spring Report. Awards and rankings originate from customer feedback and reviews, highlighting the best software products for businesses. Smarty ranked first amongst over 50 address verification services, honored with recognition in the following areas:LeaderEasiest To UseMost ImplementableEasiest AdminBest ResultsBest RelationshipBest UsabilityHighest User AdoptionBest Meets RequirementsMomentum LeaderG2's address verification category awards are based on customer feedback and verified reviews from nearly 1,000 customers.

In our recent webinar, Ryan Cox, one of our highly skilled API developers, walked through setting up and using the Smarty Go SDK. The webinar covered various essential topics, from obtaining the SDK to understanding the ins and outs of implementation. Ryan explained that the Smarty Go SDK is easily accessible on GitHub. He then moved on to discuss the key differences between embedded keys and secret keys. Embedded keys are ideal for client-side applications because they provide limited access and don’t reveal sensitive information.

Master data management is but one section of our recent ebook “Data Governance: An Executive’s Survival Guide”. You can download the full ebook for free here. What is master data?Master data is all the data critical to your business's operation. It's the data that multiple departments depend on to make decisions and drive success. From customer data to product data, financial data to inventory data, master data is the backbone of many organizations. Without it, businesses would struggle to operate efficiently and effectively.

On average, customers of Smarty process 3. 3 billion addresses collectively a day. If you were to count a single Cheeto for each address, that’s enough Cheetos to fill up 1,930 vans per day. If you were to start walking along the equator of the Earth and you took one step for each address, you’d make 38 trips around the planet. That’s a ton of address lookups. So with that much address data flying through our systems, we decided to host a webinar sharing some of the insights we’ve gained from the over 440 billion addresses that were validated in 2022.

Every business executive knows that good data is critical. When you’re developing your sales strategy and talking about how to increase revenue, you probably turn to data to answer questions like these:What areas of growth can we exploit?Which products are performing well?Is mobile or desktop driving more sales? Where is traffic increasing?How do we identify the “low-hanging fruit” customers?Where can we reduce costs?But how do you know if your data is accurate? What steps do you need to take to ensure your data is actionable and driving revenue?In our free ebook, 4 Steps to Unlocking Latent Revenue and Driving ROI with Your Address Data?, we show you how to get clean address data, and then how to use that address data to unlock latent revenue and drive ROI.

Certain surprises are fun. Finding out the person in front of you at Starbucks paid for your coffee? Java-tastic! Finding out you've been shipping products to addresses that don't exist? That's a postal catastrophe. Luckily, many shipping snafus can be prevented by using address validation software. Address validation (or verification) is the process of checking a mailing address against an authoritative address database. If the address matches an address in the known database, it is marked “valid”—meaning it's real.

It seems that 1969 was a very special year. Looking back, you’ll find some of the coolest American muscle cars peaking in their infant stages, such as the Mustang Boss 429 Fastback and the Charger R/T 427 HEMI made famous by the Duke brothers. You’ll find the first Concorde flight in France. You’ll remember what you can of Woodstock, and one man will take a small step on the moon for all mankind. It’s also the debut year of the children’s educational show Sesame Street on PBS. Very quickly, the street named after a seed became nationally known, and the question children would sing at the top of their lungs each day was, “can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?”Originally the show was called “123 Avenue B” to focus on the counting and alphabet principles that would be showcased.

Typos, typoes or typo's?No matter how you spell the word, typos are a problem. Even the most accurate typist occasionally misspells a word, leaves off a letter at the end, or just types a different word than intended. Typos in a text to your friend aren't a big deal. They'll figure out what you mean using context clues. But in a business data scenario, if you're following the logic of traditional address matching, where an address is either an exact match or not a match, you can't account for different formats or misspellings.

We recently released a free ebook, 4 Steps to Unlocking Latent Revenue and Driving ROI with Your Address Data, in which we show you how to use your company’s address data to unlock latent revenue and drive ROI. In our last article, we reviewed address parsing. Today, we’ll explain address normalization and why it matters for data cleansing and analytics. Address Normalization (or making an address look normal) is the process of formatting an address so that it matches the proper address format of the national postal authority, such as the USPS for those in the United States.

Our global economy comprises many industries—healthcare, financial services, insurance, commercial development, and more. But one thing all companies have in common, no matter the industry? They’re all chasing a bigger and better return on investment (ROI). While there are many drivers of ROI, have you ever considered the role that address validation plays?Clean address data is essential for many business functions. Consider eCommerce, one rapidly growing example. Forecasting shows this retail channel will account for 22 percent of all global retail sales by 2024.

There are many problems you may run into if you're working with address data. In our recent webinar, our own Adam Charlton went over some of the challenges he's encountered the most, and how to deal with them. Here’s some of what he talked about. You can view the full recording at the link below. StandardizationStandardizing addresses helps solve many of the problems inherent in data blending (combining two or more address databases together). To properly blend different address databases together, you need to either have an external ID correlate the two sources or have identically formatted address fields.

Parcel shipping costs have been rising since 2020. We’ve all seen inflation on the consumer end, whether we’re checking out online or paying at the gas pump. And skyrocketing freight rates have made headlines. Today, we’re going to focus on the impact of the increasing cost of shipping on your business and what you can do about it. But don’t lose hope—while we’re going to explore climbing shipment costs in this article, we’ll also chat about what your business can do to make shipping more efficient.

It’s November, and online shopping is ramping up to its climactic end-of-year blitz. www. blackfriday. com estimates that between Thanksgiving and Black Friday of this year, consumers will spend approximately $13 billion (1). That’s great news for your business. But if you don’t have the right tools in place to help you meet that demand, you might be left wishing you had better prepare. Staffing may be one issue for many businesses. According to the US Chamber of Commerce, the wholesale and retail trade industry has experienced the second-highest quit rate of all industries since November 2020(2).

QGIS is an open-source GIS (geographical information system) platform that helps millions of users throughout the world map, visualize,and share geographic information. Use cases range anywhere from mapping water usage to selecting new retail store locations. It's a highly capable tool for GIS professionals, and it's free. Because QGIS is open source, individuals and organizations are free to build and offer plugins to help users accomplish specialized tasks. This extensive library of plugins offers users a wide range of tools that allow them to build maps for very specific needs.

Companies purchase national master address lists to use in many ways for many reasons. Though some might assume the only reason to purchase a national address list is to blanket-mail or ship things to people not already in a company’s database, the lists are extensively used for asset location tracking, resource planning, market intelligence, operations optimization, business strategy, and decision-making. Let’s take a closer look at the first non-mailing use case: asset location tracking. Asset location trackingMany companies have physical equipment located throughout their service regions.

Smarty unveils unmatched QGIS geocoding accuracy with release of geocoding plugin - US addressPROVO, UT - June 21, 2022 - Smarty, a leader in location data intelligence, announces today the release of their QGIS Geocoding Plugin for US Addresses to provide an easy way for users of the popular GIS software platform to validate, standardize, and convert addresses to their latitude and longitude coordinates (geocodes). The plugin allows manual address entry as well as batch geocoding via CSV. Millions of people worldwide use QGIS to map, visualize, and share geographic information.

In this webinar, our geocoding and address expert Adam Charlton went over the ins and outs of address data. He gave details about address components and how they influence the way an address is composed. He also dove into the difference between ZIP9 and ZIP11, what a non-postal is, and other address hacks you didn’t learn in primary school. Standardization and validationWhat exactly is a valid address? There are lots of different definitions depending on what your goal is with the address. For example, a parking lot address could be a valid address for a real estate developer, but not for package delivery.

July 20, 2021 - PROVO, UTAH - SmartyStreets, a leader in location data intelligence, announces the release of the new US Address Verification - Enhanced Matching. Enhanced matching successfully verifies the messiest of addresses and includes 15 million additional valid addresses not found in the USPS address database. The new enhanced matching engine successfully validates and corrects more ill-formatted addresses than ever before. Corrections include greater varieties of misspellings, redundant text, incomplete addresses, and sloppy data.

A deceitfully comforting illusionIn the US today, there are nearly 800,000 registered sex offenders. As part of the registration process, each sex offender is required to report their physical address to a local police department (the exact process varies from state to state). This is intended to empower the public to be able to identify where these offenders live and if one of them lives near you. Having this information, you are supposed to be able to better protect your loved ones and yourself.

While it's an unfortunate truth of of today's e-commerce world, it is one that cannot be ignored: Fraud is ever-present in online transactions. The expense of unnecessary shipping costs and human resources, disgruntled customers, and the time it takes to investigate disputes adds up. And the damage to a company's brand may result in untold amounts of lost sales. Using an address verification service (or AVS) as one of the tools in your fraud management toolbox is a smart and cost-effective move.

Must have address to playEvery month, tens of billions of apps are downloaded from the Google Play store. Users of those apps have historically had limited contact with the app developers for asking questions or lodging a complaint. And getting a response from some developers has proved to be a very difficult experience. Google briefly considered requiring app developers to provide their physical address or have their app removed from Google's play store. Providing a physical address where customer questions or complaints can be handled would work well for developers that have a separate business address.

Why do some businesses fail and others succeed against all odds?On the last day of my microeconomics class, my professor asked us a question:"If there are 1. 333 trillion barrels of oil left on the planet and we use 6. 89 billion barrels of oil each year, how long will it take for us to run out of oil?"Pencils and calculators came out to solve what seemed like a math problem. I also started to do the long division, but then stepped back. It occurred to me that economics is a branch of sociology, not math.