Even for furnishings stores like Möbel Pfister, a reliable address database is absolutely pivotal to every department within the company. The financial accounting team wants to be sure that invoices arrive. The marketing team hopes that advertising will reach its target audience, and of course the logistics department needs to know that delivery addresses are correct. That’s why maintaining this database is so vital. “Addresses are a very important issue for our company,” says Carla De Simoni.

Address maintenance as a quality factor

Möbel Pfister has already been using Swiss Post’s address maintenance services for several years to ensure that the quality of its customer address data remains consistently high. “Address quality is an ongoing process,” says Renato Rescaldani, Head of Customer and Business Intelligence at Möbel Pfister. “If address maintenance is reduced, quality will immediately be affected, too.” Continual address maintenance helps to keep post-shipping returns at a consistently low level. “If address cleaning is not performed prior to a shipment, the non-deliverables rate increases right away,” adds Rescaldani. It’s clear to Möbel Pfister that recipient addresses must be cleaned before every mailing.

Regular address maintenance can also reduce the costs of internal processes. “Address maintenance and high-quality address data enable us to create revenue opportunities for the company,” says Renato Rescaldani. After all, if mailings never arrive, potential revenue is lost. For the marketing department, it’s also important to know if people have moved house: “It ensures that we can reach our target audience with material that might be more relevant to them,” explains Rescaldani.

The web service as an all-in-one solution

Möbel Pfister uses the web service for its customer address maintenance. “This means that we can run address comparisons whenever we want to,” says De Simoni. For example, if a mailing is about to be distributed, an address update can be run shortly beforehand without involving any other departments. “I can run the automatic address comparison myself at any time with the web service. The cleaned address data is then applied directly in our system,” De Simoni continues. This automatic address maintenance means “a significant increase in efficiency”, she adds.

Changing from “Address maintenance by customer” to Swiss Post’s web service – where address data is compared with all Swiss Post’s reference addresses – was certainly “no trivial task”, according to Renato Rescaldani. Möbel Pfister had to rework internal processes and automate them wherever possible. For a project like this, it very much pays to have a good IT team, as Rescaldani explains, listing the many ways that Möbel Pfister benefits from the web service:

• A central address database that is constantly updated
• The web service is integrated into the company’s in-house system
• Process optimization removes the need for manual aspects of address maintenance
• The non-deliverables rate stays consistently low
• Mailings arrive at their recipients, tapping into revenue potential
• Swiss Post offers consultation and support when questions arise

“Swiss Post’s address maintenance is absolutely worthwhile,” emphasizes Renato Rescaldani. In particular, everyone greatly appreciates the collaboration with Swiss Post, as Carla De Simoni explains. If anyone has questions, the experts at the Address Competence Center are always on hand to help out. “They run the necessary analyses, so that we always get the support we need as quickly as possible.” To put it simply: “We would absolutely recommend Swiss Post’s address maintenance.”