February 14, 2006

I find that we are often all saying the same thing, though we use different terms depending on a specific vertical market or application. Terms like middleware, business intelligence, and data quality are used ubiquitously and it reminds me of one of my favorite Shakespeare phrases: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Ah, so true indeed does it apply to these terms. Commercial mail is all about data quality and yet we often do not use that term.

The $65 billion “corporation” we call the United States Postal Service® relies entirely on the quality of the data presented on mailpieces in order to run their transportation network. In order to make sure this data is accurate, mailers must use CASS™ (USPS Certification Process for ZIP + 4 Matching Software) certified software as part of their data quality solution.

For the astute mailers that wish to leverage what I consider to be a form of privatization of the USPS®, worksharing discounts can be had through mail sortation. We call this presorting the addresses and we use PAVE™ (Program Measuring Presort Accuracy) certified software to perform this task.

Another great example of terminology differences is matching. Commercial mail prefers to call the process of removing duplicate records “merge/purge” whereas others may use the phrase match and consolidate. It’s the same thing, just termed differently to reflect our respective vertical markets.

We even have meta-data in commercial mail, though I cannot ever recall hearing the term used in our marketspace. It certainly exists though, and has for quite some time. The best example I can think of is Mail.dat®, the industry standard for communicating every conceivable variable of a mailing (at least that is the goal of the standard). It is still a work in progress, though it has made significant strides in the past decade.

The same thing holds true for reporting. For commercial mail, our business intelligence reports are postage statements, audit reports, and even the barcodes that get printed on the mailpieces. Take a look at a postage statement and I’m sure you will agree that the attributes such as the number of pieces, sortation categories, financial information, and even the company data are collectively a form of business intelligence reporting. It is this type of business intelligence that drives not only the $65 billion USPS, but is also a significant piece of the $900 billion in postal related activities in this country.