Address Collection - How to Make Sense of Your Data
Address collection can be a challenging task. It is essential to collect clean information, whether you're collecting data for weddings, holiday cards or parties.
Valid addresses help businesses save time and money. Invalid addresses lead to returned mail, extra fees and missed opportunities. Address verification tools can cut costs by ensuring that addresses are properly entered.
ArcGIS Solutions for State and Local Government
Address collection is essential for local governments. It is also an essential element in geospatial management. However many governments have difficulties in managing authoritative address repositories. They need simple workflows to capture the physical location early in the creation of an address, standard map products that inform decision makers and the general public about the quality and accuracy of their addresses, and tools to share authoritative addresses with other agencies.
Local government staff employ Esri solutions to meet these requirements. These pre-built maps and apps are designed to work with specific workflows, making it simple for local governments of all sizes and levels of geospatial knowledge to use them for better efficiency and understanding.
According to Scott Oppmann, State and Local Government Solutions Team Director, Esri, solutions are classified into categories that cover "the most commonly-used requirements in local and state government." To see the full list of the capabilities available, click here.
Address Field Inventory for instance, contains the following tasks that help you create an address layer built on a list or verified proposed sites that are collected through an online form. These feature layers can be used to create USNG Coordinates and a mailing address. In addition, the solution also enables you to divide the road at a specific point, calculate the municipal boundaries and update the address characteristics in the master road name table.
Another illustration of an Esri solution is Managing Address Field Operations, which is designed to help address authorities collect addresses that are not correct or incomplete from both external and internal stakeholders. It lets office staff assign a task to their field staff to utilize the address crowdsourcing application on their mobile devices. They can then check the addresses they submit and take note of any new ones they see while out in the field. This information is automatically inserted into the appropriate database tables to be processed and published.
The solution also enables office staff to assign a task the option of confirming an existing set of address data with a specific accuracy threshold, which helps them identify errors, such as duplicates and incorrect addresses in the database. This information can then be transferred into the master address database to enhance data quality and make the data more precise.
Reverse Geocode Geoprocessing Tool
Reverse geocoding can be used to understand data, whether you're trying to determine the location of a company or just want to find out which area is the most profitable. Many mobile apps, like Uber or Lyft rely on reverse geocoding to turn raw GPS coordinates into something that drivers can understand. Retail chains use it to understand the habits of their customers when shopping, and urban planners can combine the address data to population density to decide which areas to build public facilities.
Reverse Geocode is a tool that converts points within a feature class to addresses. It does this by locating the closest intersection or address in relation to distance. It can be used to reverse geocode individual points or multiple points in the form of a batch. Its output is structured and ready for integration into other systems and tools.
It supports standard formats and custom formats for address data. This includes the standardized attributes X and Y from a Point Address feature, as well as the identifiers of POIs (Points of Interest). You can also specify which location type the matching geometry is. It could be a routing location (a side-of street location that can be used to direct traffic) or the parcel centroid or rooftop of an address.
Additionally you can make use of the tool to build a composite locator by linking two or more existing locators together. The resultant locator will be back on the ArcGIS World Geocoding service if it fails to find an address with your own personal information.
Reverse geocoding can be a costly process. This is especially relevant if you work with a large number of coordinates. You'll need to keep your usage under Esri's free usage threshold--which is approximately 200 thousand monthly requests or you'll incur costs. Another alternative is to purchase an online service that can convert coordinates into addresses en masse for you.
It is crucial as a final step to check 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 CASS certified, such as PostGrid. This will ensure that the addresses you use in your direct mail campaigns can be delivered and are able to be delivered 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 complete many different tasks, such website as concatenating multiple sources into one target field, or splitting the string into several target fields.
The installation of the Data Assistant is required before you can use it. To do this simply click the Start button and then choose Control Panel, and then choose Add or Remove Programs. Uninstall Microsoft Data Assistant 1.0 by following the steps on screen.
Once the Data Assistant add-in is installed you can set it up to create a source-target configuration file and load or replace data from the file. The Data Mapping tool includes a number of methods for converting data between formats and handling specific characters.
Read How to use Data Assistant Add-in to learn more about how it can help you with your requirements for address collection. This guide explains how to use the Data Assistant add in and how to perform tasks to collect data from parcels and update the parcel data and populate community layer.
Data Validation Tool
A reliable address verification tool is a powerful tool that helps businesses maintain data accuracy and operational efficiency. It ensures that the correct address is used for mailing and invoices go to the right customer and marketing campaigns are sent to their intended target audience. When choosing a validation tool, look for one with broad coverage across all countries and seamless integrations into business processes. Take into consideration the pricing structure and select tools that offer a high return on investment.
It is essential to make sure that the initial entering addresses is accurate, whether it's on handwritten forms in the retail store, or electronically during an online check-out or integrating data from CRM systems. This will help reduce shipping errors and returns, and ultimately increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. This is more than an easy postal code or ZIP lookup. It requires a thorough process of address collection and validation.
This process starts by using an advanced data parsing program that breaks down the address into its individual elements, including street name, city name and postal code. The tool then matches these pieces to commercial databases to validate their accuracy. The tool then standardizes the address to be in line with international postal standards. For example, it converts extended forms into standard abbreviations or capitalization.
The address is then geocoded to confirm its location. This is crucial for companies that are globally-based. It lets them estimate shipping costs accurately and provide transparency for customers, while minimizing the possibility of costly delays due to inaccurate or incomplete information. Additionally, a reliable geocoding API will help businesses adhere to international shipping regulations and avoid customs-related issues.
Once the address has been verified, it's automatically updated in CRM and enterprise resource planning software to ensure that each customer contact, shipment or service delivery is based upon accurate information. Accurate address information can streamline the logistical side of operations by simplifying procurement and logistics processes, thereby saving time and money.