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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."