Postal-Mailing Solutions
Want to raise productivity levels in your mail and call centers? Who doesn’t—especially in the wake of the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) latest round of rate increases.
To be sure, postal/mailing solutions encompass a vast array of products and services. Here we offer a small sampling of the numerous technology applications designed to save your company’s mail and call centers time and money.
This list, while far from exhaustive, includes software that you can purchase, free applications available to customers of some outsource providers and Web-based application service providers. When known, we’ve included some cost estimates for these solutions and services.
Addressing Software
Quick Address Pro by QAS accesses the USPS national data file representing more than 150 million addresses. The software’s TypeDown Search feature enables call center reps to validate and enter any address in an average of 15 keystrokes or less. If any part of the address is missing or inaccurate, the system prompts the employee to clarify information with the customer for the complete address. The application is sold on a per-license basis with a tiered pricing system based on the number of licenses purchased.
Contact: (888) 322-6201
URL: www.qas.com/us
Firstlogic’s Postalsoft software suite includes complete address correction and encoding, merge/purge, and mail preparation capabilities for presorting and labeling. Firstlogic’s solutions are CASS-certified (Coding Accuracy Support System). CASS is the process that assures accurate USPS carrier route; five-digit, ZIP+4 codes; and delivery point bar codes. (To get automation-based discount rates, USPS requires that mailings be produced from lists matched to CASS-certified software within the last six months.)
Firstlogic’s solutions also interface with the USPS FASTforward system to update change-of-address (COA) information. Cost range: $3,295 for the DeskTop Suite, to $25,000+ for the Professional Suite depending on configuration.
Contact: (888) 215-6442 or (608) 782-5000
URL: www.firstlogic.com
Melissa Data’s Data Quality Web Services offers real-time batch and point-of-entry address verification. Using the service, catalogers can verify, correct and enhance customer data they capture from their Web sites or from inbound customer calls. Addresses are matched for accuracy and deliverability against the postal service’s database of 128 million deliverable addresses. The system returns the verified and corrected records in a standardized format with ZIP+4, carrier route and delivery point codes. Cost: $1,900 to $4,900 per year.
URL: www.melissadata.com/dqt/xml/htm
Melissa Data also offers Contact Zone, a data hygiene Web service for Microsoft Outlook users. It can verify street addresses, correct misspellings, fix incorrect ZIP codes and update area codes—all in real time. Cost: $49 per year.
Contact: (800) 800-6245
URL: www.melissadata.com/cz
dfPower Verify-SERP is a new Canadian address verification software package from DataFlux, a subsidiary of SAS Institute. The program extends support from the existing CASS certification by the USPS and offers a graphical user interface that helps you correct and verify Canadian addresses; insert correct postal codes and delivery station names; supply rural route numbers for street-served addresses; and correct invalid street types/directions. Cost: For a single user, $18,000 (includes dfPower Base and dfPower Verify - SERP); each additional user, $12,000.
Contact: (919) 674-2153
URL: www.dataflux.com
Smart AddresserUSA from Cranbury Communications is software that corrects, parses and standardizes every address in your database. It then adds USPS carrier route, ZIP+4 and delivery point barcodes to every deliverable address. Written in Microsoft FoxPro, Smart AddresserUSA can import data at more than 5 million records per hour. The full price sheet is available at www.crancomm.com/group1.htm
Contact: (919) 877-0243
URL: www.crancomm.com
SmartMailer from Pitney Bowes—a company that offers numerous products and services in the broad category of postal/mailing technology—is addressing software that provides the following features. It finds duplicate records, flags them and allows you delete those files. Its address-correction feature is CASS-certified to help you reduce undeliverable mail. ForwardTrak Net Option uses the Internet to help your call center and mail center employees identify customers who have recently moved. And the software’s pre-sort capabilities help you gain USPS work-share discounts on standard mail.
Contact: (800) 322-8000
URL: www.pb.com
Accumail Gold from Datatech SoftSmart corrects ZIP codes, street misspellings, and incorrect or missing designators such as road, avenue or boulevard. It also adds data elements such as ZIP+4 and county name, and it’s CASS-certified.
Call: (888) 227-7221
URL: www.smartsoftusa.com
List & Data Hygiene Services
Listcleanup.com from Mailnet Services is a list hygiene outsourced service that offers: National Change of Address (NCOA) updated addresses, phone numbers, area code updating, and merge/purge. In all, listcleanup.com offers 25 products and services via an integrated and automated Web-based service. The company also is a licensee of the USPS FASTforward Move Update service that, along with NCOA, can help catalogers reach customers and prospects who moved as
far back as four years ago. Listcleanup.com offers same-day and 24-hour move update services with costs of $2.80/M records for files of less than 100,000 records.
Contact: (800) 346-0073.
URL: www.listcleanup.com
Group 1 Software offers numerous applications in this product category. One of those, Code-1 Plus, is a software solution that cleans, codes and standardizes address data. The system is CASS-certified by the USPS. With the addition of Client/Server for Windows NT, multiple users now can simultaneously verify addresses on a single Code-1 Plus server. The software also offers Delivery Point Validation (DPV), the newest technology from USPS. With DPV, mailers can verify actual USPS deliverable addresses, including secondary components such as apartment numbers. Entry-level cost: $15,000. Also available from Group 1 Software: Code-1 Plus International, which validates, corrects, and/or formats customer and prospect addresses for more than 220 countries and dependencies. Entry-level cost: $20,000.
Contact: (888) 413-6763
URL: www.g1.com
infoConnect One Pass from Donnelley Marketing is a Web-driven hygiene and data enhancement outsourced service. Catalogers can submit their data through the Donnelley Marketing site; the data is matched against Donnelley Marketing’s hygiene and enhancement databases, and a clean database is returned to the cataloger within hours. This service helps catalogers lower their mailing costs. Other Donnelley Marketing services include postal presort, NCOA ZIP +4 and NCOA Nixie.
Contact: (800) 711-4913
URL: www.donnelleymarketing.com
Catalog Marketing Services, an outsourced service provider, has numerous offerings in this category. Its marketing services combined with list-processing services include merge/purge, intelligence segmentation, client specific suppression, e-commerce services, maiden name matching, multiple database platforms and much more. And its address-integrity services include NCOA; FASTforward; Locatable Address Conversion Service (LACS); Delivery Sequence File (DSF); Private Change of Address (PCOA) database; E-mail Change of Address (ECOA); Address Element Correction (AEC); and Address Correction Service (ACS). Costs vary based on size, usage and/or complexity.
Contact: (651) 636-6265
URL: www.netcms.com
Davis Direct Worldwide offers international data processing outsourced services, including address correction and merge/purge. Davis Direct’s proprietary Addrex® data-processing system maximizes the quality of international addresses and their deliverability by mail. Davis Direct also offers a new self-service, fully automated Canadian address correction, NCOA and pre-sort service that’s available any time. Price range on these services: $3/M to $35/M, depending on services needed and destination countries.
Contact: (877) 202-2007
URL: www.davisdirect.com
AddressDoctor offers an online, real-time address verification and correction service for Web merchants. Through its e-commerce solutions, AddressDoctor provides online address validation services by using error identification and correction technology, as well as a comprehensive postal data set covering the entire world—including the United States at a five-digit ZIP code level.
Contact: (866) 402-2800
URL: addressdoctor.com
Mail/Freight Tracking
BantaTrax from Banta Catalog Group is an online mail-tracking service that helps catalogers track their mail from the moment a shipment is dispatched from Banta’s facilities until it’s delivered in-home. BantaTrax involves a combination of the Postal Service’s PlanetCode, decoy tracking, and Banta’s DIRECTS distribution system, where confirmations are matched with appropriate job shipments. It ties these programs together and puts everything on concise reports for the customers. These online BantaTrax reports are available for viewing, printing or downloading. Only Banta customers can get a free test run of BantaTrax.
Contact: (888) 88-BANTA
E-mail: begmarketing@banta.com
R.R. Donnelley Logistics’ Operation Showcase is an online reporting service that monitors the Destination Delivery Units of the USPS to discern projected in-home delivery dates for mailings.
Other Donnelley Logistics tools include Showcase Plus, which notifies mailers when their products reach a seeded recipient in a targeted mailing ZIP code, and eShowcase, which uses USPS scanning equipment in combination with special barcodes (Planet Codes) to monitor large volumes of non-carrier-route sorted mail. Each service is available separately; however, by combining all three services, catalogers can monitor their mailings from the time they’re printed to when they’re delivered in-home.
Contact: (800) 800-SHIP
URL: www.donnelleylogistics.com
Intransit Tracking System, an online application for customers of DM Transportation Management Services, provides routing instructions, in-transit tracking, an air freight rate calculator, a density calculator and more. It’s a complete online tracking service right on your desktop for LTL (less than truckload), truckload and international shipments. It’s free to customers of DM Transportation Management Services.
Contact: (610) 367-0162
URL: www.dmtrans.com
Colinear’s Response for Windows is a multi-featured software application designed especially for small or mid-sized direct-commerce companies. One of its modules, UPS OnLine Tools, provides real-time shipping data including time and location of each UPS scan as a package makes its way to your customer. This enables catalog call center reps to provide customers with accurate and up-to-the-minute package routing data. The solution also interfaces with UPS OnLine Worldship, software that UPS provides free of charge to its customers.
Contact: (800) COLINEAR
URL: www.colinear.com
Mail Management System
Mail Manager 2010 from BCC Software is a PC-based solution that optimizes postal presorts for mailing professionals. The system has USPS Presort Accuracy Validation and Evaluation (PAVE) certification for co-sack/tray and merged pallet presorts. Users can encode three lines of address in one pass, perform list maintenance functions, create and modify list layouts, and much more. Cost: $3,500, including one year of BCC’s toll-free phone support, regular software updates and a user guide. Premium options and a “lite” edition are available.
Contact: (800) 453-3130
URL: bccsoftware.com
Postal/Mailing Functions Within Catalog Management Systems
Mail Order Manager from Dydacomp is a fully integrated catalog-management software package designed for high-volume transactions. Among its many offerings: reporting and analysis tools, as well as special modules to help with automatic shipping calculations, warehousing, credit card authorization, telemarketing and more. Cost range: $995 for small-business editions, to $25,000+ for enterprise-wide editions.
Contact: (800) 858-3666; international: (973) 237-9415
URL: www.dydacomp.com/cs
TernoVelocity from Terno & Associates is a full-featured catalog management system that offers, among its many solutions, integrated shipping. It calculates shipping charges; it can charge additional freight for multiple ship-to addresses or per each inventory item; and it generates shipping manifests for all major carriers. The system also can offer an integration to third-party packages such as Clippership and Harvey Software. The price for the complete catalog management solution, including the integrated shipping feature, starts at $35,000 for a 10-user license.
Contact: (330) 629-7004
URL: www.terno.com
CatMan from Avexxis offers a fulfillment and warehouse operations module that provides picking, verification, shipping, receiving, customer and vendor returns, inter- and intra-warehouse product movement and more. Shipping includes invoice generation and/or processing of credit card payments. Receiving includes notification of outstanding backorders for cross-dock shipping.
Contact: (888) AVEXXIS
URL: www.avexxis.com
Ecometry Retail Enterprise offers integrated front- and back-office functional modules fueled by one central customer database. Its open systems framework uses XML as its interface standard. Its shipping module facilitates automatic shipping and electronic data interchange manifesting with every major shipping service. It also enables “best way” shipping, allowing you to control how your packages are shipped based on pre-defined variables such as order value and proximity. The shipping module is included in the Ecometry suite and is not sold separately.
Contact: (561) 265-2700
URL: www.ecometry.com
Manifest/Shipping Systems
Clippership version 7.1 is a Windows-based software application that manages catalogers’ multi-carrier requirements, including e-manifesting, compliance-label generation and myriad reporting capabilities. The solution simplifies the shipping function by supporting flexible data integration, and its rate-shopping function helps catalogers discern optimal shipping rates and routing. Version 7.1 supports the recent postal rate changes. Pricing varies based on implementation.
Contact: (877) 872-2379
URL: www.kewill.com
Harvey Software’s Computerized Parcel System (CPS) is a carrier-certified software solution that helps you ship parcels via UPS, FedEx and USPS. CPS works with off-the-shelf hardware and stores data about every parcel and shipment processed for easy retrieval by accounting personnel, order trackers, inventory managers and others. CPS is a FedEx Certified Solution, UPS OnLine Compatible and USPS MAC-certified and provides many data connectivity options. In addition, Harvey Software has partnered with Dydacomp, makers of Mail Order Manager (M.O.M.), to offer an interface between CPS and M.O.M. When orders placed in M.O.M. are processed as packed and ready to ship, Dydacomp’s Universal Shipping Interface module immediately supplies shipping data for the CPS shipping system. This real-time link eliminates batch data transfer, speeds shipping, may reduce shipping mistakes, and reduces the time between taking an order and shipping it, according to Harvey Software officials. Prices for CPS software packages start at $595 with support for all the carriers listed above.
Contact: (800) 231-0296
URL: www.harveysoftware.com
Neopost ASX Outbound Logistics System from Neopost is a PC-based, multi-carrier-compliant, small-parcel software program that automates the shipping process. It can display multiple carrier services on a single computer screen and select the lowest carrier rate for a desired delivery need. It also enforces order-specific shipment parameters, supports multiple carrier manifests, creates parcel carrier identification numbers, generates compliant shipping labels and airbills, electronically uploads closed manifests to the carriers, consolidates shipping transaction data and prints summary reports, and much more. Costs are customized to individual clients.
Contact: (888) Neopost
URL: www.neopostinc.com
Lightweight Express, a service from R.R. Donnelley Logistics, is designed specifically for low-weight parcels and flats, such as CDs and requested catalogs. The system efficiently speeds materials through the USPS, provides delivery confirmation for parcels and helps catalogers reduce their distribution costs by 15 percent to 40 percent, according to Donnelley Logistics. Mail pieces enter deeper into the mail stream, bypassing origin processing, and arrive in-home within three to five days on average.
Contact: (800) 800-SHIP
URL: www.donnelleylogistics.com
Window Book offers numerous software solutions for mailers using USPS services. For example, the Dat-Mail application enables users to view, edit and exchange mail.dat files; view USPS qualification reports; and generate, edit and print postage statements. Cost range: $299 for the Dat-Mail viewer, up to $9,999 for a Dat-Mail site license with options that may include freight planning, copalletization, management reporting, spoilage management and/or trailer loading.
Another Window Book software product, Postal Package Partner, provides delivery confirmation for USPS Priority and package shipments; supports manifesting; calculates postage and fees for special services; enables you to get the lowest published rate of any major carrier for a half-pound package; downloads package tracking data via the Internet; and more. Cost range: $299 to $1,499.
Contact: (800) 370-2410, ext. 5
URL: www.windowbook.com
