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 seven 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 Peter Allies, Managing Director at Allies Computing. "We have benefited from working with Tribal Technology on address management and GIS projects over the last seven years and are hopeful that the business partnership will continue for many more."

The government Sure Start initiative, which has regional programmes based at multiple locations around the country, uses representatives to go out and speak to householders in a small localised area every day.

They want their representatives to be able to collect and verify address data in the field, whilst they are with the householder. Software developers CPFR Solutions in partnership with Allies Computing have helped more than 150 programmes nationally to achieve this using a bespoke address management solution.

By downloading only the relevant local address data into their handheld devices each morning, they are able to verify addresses quickly from Postcode and premise at each house where the home owner expresses an interest in the programme. The small amount of PAF^® held on the device at any one time leaves plenty of memory space for recording the other information they collect on the households they visit.

CallScripter, one of the best known call-guiding software packages for call centres, was developed by a company called Ansaback in 2001. It offers intuitive management of customer calls with tailored scripts which can be easily worked through and with the ability to quickly design custom scripts incorporated. Designed by the technical team of a call centre, it has been created from the start with efficient customer and contact management in mind.

One of the features Ansaback wished to offer with the software was the ability to rapidly complete addresses using just the postcode and a premise name or number. In August 2001, the developers contacted Allies Computing looking for a cost effective way to add this into the CallScripter package.

Allies^® were able to provide a full evaluation of their PAF^® based integration software, PostCoder API Professional, at thoroughfare level, and the developers found that they could swiftly integrate this option into the web-based scripting software.

Almost four years on, CallScripter is a widely used product, with hundreds of scripts running in call centres throughout the UK including a well-known Italian sports car company and several UK Utilities Companies. They have continued to offer the rapid addressing feature to all customers for whom postal addresses are a requirement, and this enhancement ensures postally correct addresses are collected fast and efficiently; an advantage to both the call centre staff and their customers.