News
With a company as dynamic as ours, we're constantly evolving and we've always got plenty of news.
Find out about our latest PostCoder® products, product launches, events, internal staff changes and other news. We also have an archive of old articles for your reference. Happy reading!
December 2005 - A Christmas present from Allies Computing
For Christmas this year, Allies Computing Ltd are giving away 20 free address lookups per day to all their website visitors. They hope it will give people the opportunity to see how easily addresses can be corrected and find out for themselves the benefits of address management. The free lookups could be used for:
- Sending Christmas cards and parcels to your family and friends
- Businesses sending goods and Christmas gifts to clients
- Businesses for invoicing or direct marketing through the post
Allies® knows the importance of ensuring your mail gets to the correct address first time.
Commercial Director, Lesley Hunt, says:
"With millions of cards and packages going through the postal system at this time of year, it is more important than ever to send them with a complete and Postally correct address. Everyone wants their Christmas parcels and cards to arrive on time, in the right place, but poor or incompletely addressed items can be delayed or even undeliverable. We hope that discovering how easy and effective address management can be while they address their Christmas cards will make people consider the value of it all year round"
For correct addresses all year round, Allies Computing's PostCoder® software is also available in a range of desktop solutions, an Internet service for Websites, or a toolkit for developers. Free trials are on offer throughout the year. In the spirit of the season though, Allies Computing have gone a little bit further for December, with 20 free lookups per visitor.
To take advantage of this offer when addressing Christmas cards, visitors should visit www.postcoder.com and click "Postcode lookup" on the menu.
August 2005 - Tribal Technology Ltd chooses PostCoder API Professional
Tribal Technology aims to be the first choice for creative IT and information management solutions that improve and transform organisations. They deliver complete business solutions, incorporating both technology and support services to the public and private sector. The solutions aim to maximise the use of information to improve service delivery, back office administration and management planning.
Tribal Technology is the IT and information management division of Tribal Group plc, the fastest growing company supporting the public sector today. The Group's activities cover the full spectrum of strategic and operational support services including consulting, property, technology, resourcing, training and communications.
Tribal Technology's Foundation Software Suite, which is delivered to over 50% of Local Authorities across the UK, uses address management functionality. They recognise that address management is increasingly important to today's businesses in their drive for increased efficiency in speed and delivery of service. Address Management begins with verifying addresses at the first point of contact with customers so that the address can be used throughout the organisation for billing, delivery of goods and maintaining contact with the customer - a key factor in building a long term business partnership.
The Foundation Software Suite incorporates Allies Computing Address Management functionality using PostCoder API.
The Foundation Software Suite, have incorporated address management functionality as part of their total software solution since 1982. In 1999, this part of their solution came up for review and Allies Computing were recommended by one of their Local Authority clients who were already a customer of Allies®.
"When it was felt that the time had come to replace our existing supplier of address look-up software, we made a conscious decision to use Allies® based on the overall standard of the software and its benefits to our users" says a representative of Tribal Technology.
Windows was the chosen development environment, because it was the standard environment for the majority of Local Government systems and a widely supported operating system.
The Foundation Software Suite, was originally developed using Visual Basic, .NET and Centura, although across the Tribal Group a range of other Windows development languages are used. PostCoder API offered examples in ten different development languages and gave the developers a range of searching functions, allowing them to integrate address lookup into their management solution with minimum additional development work.
Adrian Whittell, one of the Software development team at Tribal, says "Most of the example applications were used to enable us to fast track the development as much of the existing functionality was able to be duplicated in our own applications. The fuzzy address matching seems to work particularly well. This enables us to match a large number of addresses where the postcode/premise combination is incorrect. We are also able to match an address to an LEA which has also proved useful for our customers."
In addition to functional requirements, with every software purchase, customers need to know that they will be well supported both during the initial development stage and in the future. Allies® have always offered full technical support with all their solutions (from desktop software to development packages) and provide free evaluations of all applications, so customers can be confident that the software is exactly what they require.
Allies® sales team worked closely with the Tribal Technology development team from the very beginning to ensure that they were getting the functionality their customers required. The two companies continue to work together on address management and the Tribal Technology development team are consulted during reviews and changes to the PostCoder API software and its additional components.
As Tribal Technology found both the software functionality and the support offered by Allies® met their requirements, PostCoder API has now been integrated into their Foundation Software Suite.
Adrian Whittell, one of the senior developers at Tribal says, "Over 90% of the Local Authority Management software users take advantage of the PAF® data through the Allies Computing component, and are always very positive about its functionality"
The PostCoder® element of the software, utilising a proprietary indexed version of Royal Mail's Postcode Address File (PAF®) data, offers Foundation Software Suite users the ability to find accurate matches for what can often be poor quality address data coming from a wide range of sources. Its integration directly into the management application allows users to clean data as it is received from source.
In addition, this element has become an essential part of Tribal Technology's Schools Admissions System where accurate addressing is essential. Using the API and Allies' PCGRIDs software, which allows access to and querying of Ordnance Survey's AddressPoint Data (offering .1M accuracy grid references for each address), the system can now calculate the shortest walking distance to a school to within a metre, assisting Local Authorities in assessing appropriate schools placements.
Over the years that the two companies have been working together, Tribal Technology's team have found the Allies Computing customer support team "very good, with always helpful and polite staff", whilst Allies® have found the feedback from the Tribal Technology developers during consultancy "helpful and useful in suggesting new directions and enhancements for our address management solutions". Says Lesley Hunt, Commercial Director at Allies Computing. "We have benefited from working with Tribal Technology on address management and GIS projects over the years and are hopeful that the business partnership will continue for many more."
June 2005 - New SOAP Version for PostCoder web service
New soap version for PostCoder Web Service - Even better address finding gives faster results than ever before!
PostCode Web SOAP offers access to unlimited address lookups at premise level across the internet on a "pay as you go" basis.
PostCoder Web - the Allies Computing pay as you go online address lookup service, for your website or Intranet application, has just been released in a new and improved SOAP version.
The new product adds premise level drop down address searches and "Find the Postcode" search capability to the service, as well as offering the opportunity to bring back OS 100m grid references for the given Postcode. This can be used to supply a "find my nearest outlet" type service on a website when collecting visitor/customer information, or even to locate the address on a map.
"With all the convenience afforded by a Web service (no CD updates, no installation) added to the budget benefits of a per lookup charging system, we think PostCoder Web SOAP is the way forward" says MD Peter Allies.
The new web service is available from this week and can be used using pre-purchased credit packs, or by signing up for one of the monthly payment schemes available. Lookups are charged from as little as a penny per address. Users can seamlessly add the lookup into any address collection forms on their website, allowing customers to enter their complete (and verified) address in just a few keystrokes. The Royal Mail's Postcode Address File (PAF$reg;) data against which addresses are verified is held on the Allies$reg; web server and updated regularly, so that users are always checking against the latest edition of PAF$reg;.
The service is already being voted a success. Technical Support Manager Joe Naylor says, "The feedback we had from customers involved in the beta trial was that the service was easy to set up, easy to use and outperformed expectations for both speed and search capabilities."
February 2005 - Technology for Marketing 2005
It was great to meet so many new faces at TFM 2005. We hope everyone who attended had a chance to visit our stand and collect their free PostCoder® trial, along with one of our much talked about flashing pens.
We are pleased to congratulate Gerrod Taylor, of Interactive Prospect Targeting, on winning the draw for our luxury chess set. The chess set is on its way to you Gerrod, and we hope will give you many enjoyable hours.
If you didn't get a chance to come and see us, or the stand was too busy for you to speak to one of our team, don't worry! You can still collect your free CD, just by dropping us a line.
Request either our desktop software PostCoder 8, a brand new version of PostCoder® with some excellent new features all based on customer requests or, for software and website developers, our easy to use integration kit, PostCoder API.
Just send an email to with PC8 or API in the header; include your premise and Postcode, and a CD will be on its way to you within one working day.
If there were any questions you planned to ask us at the show, and you didn't get a chance to speak to one of our team, again, just or give us a call on +44 (0)1508 494488 and one of our Sales Advisors will be happy to help.
January 2005 - NEW PostCoder® to be launched at Technology for Marketing 2005
Allies Computing are demonstrating a range of PostCoder® products, including NEW desktop PostCoder®, at this year's Technology For Marketing show in Olympia, London on 8th and 9th February. They anticipate a lot of interest in both the new desktop product and their integration tool for developers, PostCoder API, and expect to meet representatives from a range of organisations to increase awareness of PostCoder® business tools and promote the importance of Address Management.
Sales and Marketing Manager, Emma Pinchen, who will be heading the TFM team, says:
"The new PostCoder® gives users even more control over how they manage their addresses. Many of our PostCoder® customers say they don't know how they managed without it! We are looking forward to launching the new edition at the Expo, but expect an equal amount of interest in our API which has offered consistently good address management integration for developers since 1999."
PostCoder® speeds up address collection and can help eliminate errors in your address database, from wrong addresses to bad spelling and typing mistakes. With ready to use desktop versions, an API for integrating into your own solutions and a SOAP service for use on websites, PostCoder® offers a range of solutions for use in all areas of business. Call Centres, Utility companies, Web developers and Mail Order companies are just some examples of industries where PostCoder® is currently making a difference.
Anyone who collects addresses as part of their business practice should come and speak to Allies® on stand C76. The Allies® team can go through your business practices with you and show where a PostCoder® solution could help, improving efficiency, reducing mail returns and keeping databases correct and up to date.
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