Market scan - Address validation providers
Introduction
Platforms consuming Customers and Vendors master data (name, address and contact details), have advised that the data quality is not sufficient and there are many cases which require rework of the customer or vendor master data before the transactions can be processed.
To improve the data quality, new components should be added to the master data ecosystem to ensure that the data is correct at time of capture.
There are multiple companies that provide these services, and this market scan lists a selection of the suppliers and their capabilities.
The processes to onboard customer or vendor details are:
- Customers can be onboarded by the customer directly through Maersk.com, or via a service centre.
- Vendor are onboarded via the service centre.
The FbM Portfolio has a requirement for address validation for last mile consumers. Consumers provide delivery address via Maersk.com. The consumers should be provided with address autocomplete as well as validation of the address provided.
Address validation components required:
- To enhance the experience for direct customer capture, and to support the service centre staff (who cannot be expected to recognise and validate addresses from around the world), the onboarding process for both customer and vendor must include address autocomplete and address validation components, as well as phone and email verification components.
- The information captured needs to include an Address Accuracy score, which can be used by data quality teams to manage the data quality, and this score must travel with the master data.
- To improve the historical information, there needs to be a batch component to support bulk validation of master data
- There is a further requirement to manage local country formatting as well as local language translations as certain countries may enforce ruling on how address are provided
Market Scan Objectives
- Identify a set of suppliers that can provide Address Validation capabilities
- The suppliers are split into 2 groups
- ‘Map’ address validation vendors - Navigational Map providers who have extended their offerings to include address validation (Google Maps, Azure Maps, etc)
- 'Aggregator’ Address validation vendors , who aggregate data collected from country postal providers (Melissa, Loqate, Address Doctor, etc)
- High level analysis of the capabilities of each supplier
- High level approach to testing the capabilities of the suppliers
- Initial view on the commercials - standard rates
Providers
Analysis
Country coverage
| Provider | Number of Countries | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Smarty | 248 | https://www.smarty.com/docs/cloud/international-street-api#countries |
| Melissa | 240 | https://wiki.melissadata.com/?title=Data%5FCoverage%5Fby%5FCountry |
| Loqate | 250 | https://support.loqate.com/coverage-full/ |
| Postcoder | 249 | https://postcoder.com/docs/address-lookup/autocomplete-find |
| Address Doctor (Informatica) | 240 | https://www.informatica.com/gb/products/data-quality/data-as-a-service/address-verification/interactive-country-map.html cannot download country select only |
| Google Maps | 40 | |
| Azure Maps | ||
| Here Maps | ||
| MasterCard | ||
| What 3 Words | ||
| Postgrid | 245 | https://www.postgrid.com/global-address-coverage/ |
| Experian | 240 | https://docs.experianaperture.io/address-validation/experian-address-validation/overview/supported-countries-and-datasets/#address |
| GeoPostCodes | 247 | not able to get data |
Comparison spreadsheet can be found here Compare Address validation by country and vendor.xlsx
Summary
Smarty (formerly SmartyStreets)
Key Selling Points:
- Smarty specializes in U.S. and international address validation, with a particular strength in USPS and Canada Post data.
- The service includes type-ahead verification for quick address entry and improved accuracy.
- Smarty offers a tiered pricing structure, making it cost-effective for small to medium-sized businesses.
- Known for its developer-friendly API, Smarty is popular among tech teams for quick and straightforward integration.
Melissa Data
Key Selling Points:
- Melissa provides detailed address correction, including postal code and standardized formatting for multiple countries.
- Supports both real-time validation and batch processing, allowing organizations to clean entire databases in one go.
- Melissa offers geocoding services as well as the ability to append additional data like demographics.
- Certified by multiple postal organizations (USPS, Royal Mail), Melissa is well-recognized for regulatory compliance.
Loqate
Key Selling Points:
- Loqate’s data is sourced from multiple trusted providers, ensuring high accuracy for address verification.
- Provides address autocomplete and type-ahead suggestions, reducing keystrokes and enhancing the user experience.
- Loqate includes geolocation services, which allow for accurate mapping and spatial analysis alongside address validation.
Postcoder
Key Selling Points:
- Postcoder focuses heavily on UK and Ireland address data, making it ideal for companies operating in these regions. The service relies on authoritative sources like Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF) for high accuracy in these markets.
- Postcoder offers real-time address validation and autocomplete, enabling faster form completions and reducing data entry errors. This helps streamline checkout and registration processes for businesses, improving customer experience.
- Postcoder ensures GDPR compliance and high data privacy standards, which is critical for businesses handling personal address data.
AddressDoctor (an Informatica Solution)
Key Selling Points:
- AddressDoctor is known for its high accuracy and compliance with global postal standards.
- Particularly well-suited for international and multi-format address structures (e.g., Latin, Kanji).
- Offers both on-premises and cloud deployment options, allowing flexibility for enterprise environments.
- AddressDoctor’s multilingual capabilities make it suitable for businesses with diverse customer bases.
Google Maps Platform
Key Selling Points:
- Google Maps offers address autocomplete, geocoding, and reverse geocoding, making it easy to verify and locate addresses.
- With global data and real-time updates, Google Maps covers nearly every region, offering exceptional reach and reliability.
- Beyond address validation, Google Maps can provide valuable context like nearby businesses, geographic features, and more.
- With the familiar Google Maps interface, it enhances the user experience through recognizable and intuitive design.
Azure Maps
Key Selling Points:
- Included as already in use in Maersk
Here Maps
Key Selling Points:
- Included as already in use in Maersk
PostGrid
Key Selling Points:
- PostGrid provides easy-to-use APIs for address validation and geocoding.
- PostGrid is optimized for North American addresses and meets the requirements for postal discounts and accurate deliveries.
- Offers batch address verification for database cleanup and mailing list management.
- Pricing is accessible for small businesses while also offering scalable solutions for larger enterprises.
Experian
Key Selling Points:
- It offers real-time validation to verify addresses as they are entered, improving data accuracy at the point of entry.
- Experian's address validation is part of its broader suite of data quality tools, enabling organizations to manage and cleanse their entire database.
- With flexible APIs and seamless integration options, it works well within CRM systems and ecommerce platforms.
Geopostcodes
Key Selling Points:
- Mentions Self-hosted data - ie maintain the data in our environment, with weekly updates..
Requirements
| Feature |
|---|
| Country Coverage |
| Address validation and conformance |
| Address Accuracy score |
| Address Autocomplete |
| Geocoding / reverse Geocoding (Pindrop translation) |
| Address Enrichment (what enrichment? lat/long ?) |
| Bulk Address validation |
| Multilingual support (Translation to/from local language) - not general ‘translations’ |
| English language in the address response |
| Format address for local countries |
Non Functional Requirements
| Feature |
|---|
| Availability (SLA on API calls) |
| Data privacy (use of Maersk supplied data) |
| Support function |
| Security |
Evaluation of a service provider
To have a clear output of any test data having been validated by each service provider, it is a must that the output is clear and comparable across the services tested. Therefore a structured approach is needed.
It is not enough to simply auto lookup 100s of addresses of varying quality to see if the service provides a reply without actually evaluating the reply. One of the reasons for this is that some services will come with a reply whether an address exists or not.
It is important to handle the input and output data correctly in terms on character sets as data will otherwise gets scrambled when using special characters and it will not be possible to evaluate the quality of the data if that happens.
Address validation evaluation
For this it is suggested that human evaluation is included in the PoC. We can divide the tests in to a high quality data lookup and low quality data lookup.
High quality lookup
A limited number of addresses (between 2 and 5 records) from each country existing in the current dataset in Maersk is extracted. The address should be of good quality and must exist in real life. The data owner is to provide guidance on which customers..
Each participating service is then requested to validate the addressed and the responses are logged for each service. As the data set will be 300 - 750 addressed a human will evaluate each and indicate a scoring for each service on how good the response is; 1 for good, 2 for medium and 3 for poor. GDA team will evaluate the responses
Once the human evaluation is complete it will be possible to calculate a combined score for all countries for each service on how well they are able to validate an address.
Low quality lookup
Same approach is applied as with high quality address evaluation, but for this input data an address with low quality must be selected from each country as input to the evaluation.
Observations
- Implementing an Address validation component in isolation will limited the improvements to data quality. This should be seen as an ‘Assistant’ and requires that the Customer/Vendor onboarding process is further refined.
- Address Validation component should be considered for ‘Last Mile Delivery’ where consumers will enter delivery addresses as part of the transactional process (ie they are consumers and not customers).
- Consider to enforce different data entry rules depending on the country - for example in the UK all that is needed is ‘Post Code’ and ‘Street Number’, whereas in India, customers will need to provide full address.
- Consider to enforce different data validation rules depending on the country - for example country specific post code or telephone number format..
- Consider the usage of address validation for changes to Customer/Vendor master data.
- Need to include testing to identify if Address validation will return the new level of ‘District’ required in some countries for addresses..
High level evaluation of address validation providers
Selected PoC vendors
Decision was to include existing Map providers already used in Maersk
- Azure Maps
Include the following ‘Aggregator’ address services providers
- Loqate
- Melissa
Included, as there is ongoing PoC based on connections through the DC exit project ( using GCP)
For all of these providers - we will run the selected address records through the all use cases, and provide a summary of the results across the different providers
References
- Jira issue NSGHTS-535 -Consulting - EA - Market scan memo of address validation providers Done