How This Entire Industry Stayed Hidden in Plain Sight for Years?

Looks like address validation is better than 007 in this respect…

Picture the poor spellchecker technology trailing behind every keystroke you make, ready to autocorrect before you make an embarrassing mistake and hit send.

It’s constantly saving us from the peril of ‘teh’ instead of ‘the’ – or worse, Americanizing Americanising your content when we’re here writing for a predominantly Australian audience!

Or in our offices, let’s spare a thought for the IT support technician. They rescue us from the ‘blue screen of death’ or the printer that’s decided it no longer feels like printing because it can smell your fear. Our tech pals come armed with software patches and antivirus tools so that you can be the hero of your own workday.

Let’s get to the point here.

Ultimately, there are tons of people and technologies that help set the stage for others to shine: utility workers, server farms (this is where all the internet comes from!), and encryption systems.

Does talking about them make anybody jump and down with joy? I know I’m not particularly excited to hear about them, but I do know that we wouldn’t be getting anywhere without their hard work!

So today, let’s try to shine the spotlight on a process that not many people outside of this niche know about, and that’s address validation.

And if this article makes you yawn before the end, we’ll give you a free trial to our flagship address validation product!

Table of Contents

The Secret Life of Addresses – Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Think it’s all just about checking whether this place is listed on Google Maps or if it’s got a Facebook page? Think again.

Address validation can be a real beast, requiring Sherlock Holmes’ level of detective work just to make sure that “42 Wallaby Way” isn’t actually “41 Wallaby Avenue” or “43 Wallabee Way”.

If you do any marketing, delivering, or selling, then you need to know that an address is deliverable before you spend any time, money, and effort on it. That’s the first big bump when it comes to address validation because these capabilities are not available on other platforms. It doesn’t come with your e-commerce platform, social media applications, or digital maps.

Real, nitty-gritty address validation in Australia and New Zealand is about aligning with the most recent address information from a trusted government source and keeping the validating service updated, so that the business at the end never has to worry about all the boring things like paying royalties and doing dev updates in the back-end and whatever else.

And these updates happen at least four times a year. The bottom line? Snoresville! Nobody’s got time for that!

At DataTools, we work closely with Australia Post to release regular updates with no downtime, in line with the updates they release on the Postal Address Files (PAF). The PAF is a massive database of all the deliverable addresses in the country, verified by our very own Australia Post posties.

DataTools Address Validation in action validating a users address.

Stop Wasting Time on Addresses That Are “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”

The second big oops that businesses frequently spend way too much money covering up on is geolocation. Some companies may need exact coordinates for hyperlocal marketing, location-based analytics, or in-depth market research.

Geolocation doesn’t just point vaguely and say, “Somewhere over there,” but provides pinpoint accuracy – because “close enough” only works in horseshoes and hand grenades.

DataTools’ secondary source of data is the Geocoded National Address Files (GNAF). If you ever need something to arrive at an exact longitude and latitude, we know how to make that happen because we work closely with implementing, maintaining, and updating our products with the latest GNAF releases.

When “Oops” Isn’t Just a Cute Mistake

Ever mistyped an address and thought, “Ah, what’s the worst that could happen?” Well, imagine a delivery van circling the block, the driver’s optimism fading with each pass. A misplaced digit, a rebellious comma, or a street name playing musical chairs – these tiny rebels can turn your logistics into a slapstick comedy, minus the laughter.

And that translates into missed opportunities, unhappy customers, and money wasted.

Now, before you panic at the thought of combing through a haystack of addresses, let’s talk tech.

At DataTools, we make products that make our clients feel like we’re giving out magic lamps – except instead of granting three wishes, we effortlessly sync every address with PAF and GNAF.

It’s not magic; it’s just really clever, meticulous, coding so that you get an excellent end product to use, every time.

We’ve created and used our products for almost thirty years to help clients do one-off bulk cleansing, real-time address validation, data migration, and more. If you deal with customer information, we bet we’ve got a solution or two that could help you work faster, lighter, and happier!

Conclusion: Behind Every Smooth Delivery…

The best part of the internet is getting to do things without having to think a lot about how to make them happen: online shopping, direct messages, streaming the most popular shows, online food deliveries, digital banking…the list goes on and on!

But as you navigate the bustling online marketplace, spare a thought for the meticulous work happening in the shadows. And if you find yourself or someone close to you needing to know this information for work as well…now you know where to find it!

Behind every smooth delivery, order, and message is an address validation service working its behind off to make sure that the receiver exists…so the sender doesn’t have to waste their time and money.

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