Tracesmart

“Matchcode Batch provides us with extremely robust and swift matching capabilities, which ensures we can meet our client’s needs. It also delivers superb matching rates that allow us to let it run without requiring constant technical support; as a result our IT department has been able to concentrate their efforts on other parts of the business.”

Technical Director at Tracesmart, Paul Weathersby

Background

Based in Cardiff Bay, Tracesmart is the UK’s leading Internet-based people finder search engine. Providing tracing services for both individuals and business clients, their websites (www.tracesmart.co.uk and www.tracesmartcorporate.co.uk) have over 340,000 registered users performing over 10,000 individual searches each day.

Tracesmart’s core database holds records on over 200 million individuals and 2 million businesses within the UK, including contact data, date of birth information, FTSE 350 share indexes and property data. In addition to the web-based tracing application, Tracesmart also supplies a batch tracing service, manual tracing for asset reunification, ID verification for fraud prevention and anti-money laundering, data cleansing and marketing list hire. The company’s customers span a wide range of sectors, from individuals looking to trace long-lost family members to banks attempting to locate owners of dormant accounts.

One of the company’s primary objectives is to be able to return the most accurate information in the fastest time possible. Underlying this, data quality and integrity is crucial to the operational efficiency of the whole business, as Technical Director at Tracesmart, Paul Weathersby explains, “Data quality processes are firmly embedded in our company culture. We have to provide premium quality contact data to our customers, so that we can be confident it is fit for the intended purpose and that they are speaking to the right people. The accuracy of our data is the principal factor that our customers judge us on and why they choose Tracesmart.”

The challenge

Tracesmart’s core database grows on a daily basis with new data provided by its partner suppliers. To ensure the new data is accurate, complete and up-to-date before it is added to the database, Tracesmart’s IT team perform a series of crucial processes, including address validation, mortality screening (Tracesmart holds the largest mortality database in the UK) and several manual verification checks.

Previously the team was using a proprietary application to match the contact data in the new files against Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF), in batches. This was also performed for cleansing customers, who sent files to Tracesmart to be processed.

“Our PAF checking tool was very effective but could be slow,” comments Weathersby. “The IT department was dedicating resource to running and supporting the system and we ran the risk of providing our customers with a less than satisfactory service. We required an application that could significantly improve the speed so that it would run batches almost continuously, but not compromise on the quality of the contact data.”

The solution

After evaluating numerous suppliers, Tracesmart selected Capscan’s Matchcode Batch. Weathersby explains the choice, “As we are in the business of data, we recognised Capscan as having a strong reputation for speed and superior address matching rates. We also spoke to other Matchcode Batch users and received recommendations for its technology.”

Weathersby continues, “The Matchcode Application Programme Interface (API) was easy for our IT department to implement onto our bespoke web-based platform and was running in less than two weeks. The technical support from Capscan has been excellent.”

Matchcode Batch ensures Tracesmart’s database is only populated with accurate, complete and up-to-date contact data, by matching addresses against PAF. Address data that is incorrect or incomplete is replaced with a full and valid address. Matchcode Batch enables Tracesmart to run bulk cleansing on large volumes of contact data and produces matching rates of 90% or more against PAF on a first run and can process over a million records per hour.

“Using Capscan every record containing an address is validated before being entered into the database. Due to the sheer volume of files we need to cleanse daily Matchcode Batch is run night and day,” says Weathersby.

The benefits

“Matchcode Batch provides us with extremely robust and swift matching capabilities, which ensures we can meet our client’s needs. It also delivers superb matching rates that allow us to let it run without requiring constant technical support; as a result our IT department has been able to concentrate their efforts on other parts of the business,” says Weathersby.

“Contact data quality is our lifeblood – if this is not correct it impacts negatively on all areas of the business, from the tracing tools to the ID verification service to the data cleansing system,” states Weathersby. “For example, we are seeing huge growth in searches for elusive debtors through our work with collections agencies. Anything less than the highest quality data can have a negative effect on their business, which in turn affects our business. Additionally, many professional organisations also use Tracesmart’s ID verification service for anti-money laundering and fraud prevention, so again it is imperative the data we use in the first place is 100% accurate.”

According to Weathersby, Capscan’s technology is fundamental to Tracesmart’s offering going forward. “The IT department is developing further services based upon PAF validation and we have strong ongoing support from Capscan.”

“Crucially, Capscan has ensured that Tracesmart delivers a fast turnaround on bulk data cleansing jobs for our clients. It strongly supports our reputation for delivering a speedy, trustworthy and reliable service to all of our customers. As a result, we have seen exceptional levels of customer satisfaction as our clients are getting the information they need, when they need it,” Weathersby concludes.