The importance of CASS Software in Business Mailing

CASS Software enables the Post Offices to handle the mails more efficiently and quickly. Coding Accuracy Support System, popularly known as CASS actually evaluates the accuracy and correctness of the addresses and is also used to rectify and match addresses. In the process of CASS certification, the address zip is matched with the United States Postal Service (USPS) master list. It also helps in fixing incorrect addresses.

This programming not only standardizes and corrects addresses, but it completes the incomplete address. In certain addresses the state’s name is missing or the zip code is missing. This software with the help of its matching function helps in adding all the missing information thus completing the address. Postal services are also benefited with the help of certification as correct addresses help them save money in terms of time and manpower. The volume of unsorted and non deliverable mail is greatly reduced.

Postal Services often offer discounts to mailers who use CASSsoftware for their mailing addresses. They offer these discounts because their handling time for your mail which is certified is reduced to a great extent. With the certified mail the 9 digit zip codes are correctly and accurately represented in the bar codes and the United States Postal Service readily accepts your barcodes as accurate once you show them that you have matched it with their masters list of 9 digit zip code. Although they may not insist on a report that proves that you have performed CASS certification run for zip plus 4 check on your mailers, still it is advisable to store this report properly in case of future reference.

Business mailing are much benefited with the programming of the best mailers having correct and accurate bar codes attract a percentage of discounts in the postal charges thus resulting in savings in administrative expenses of your business. For availing the discounts, you need to put in some efforts so that accurate 9 digit zip codes are used in your addresses.

Not only is this software important because it helps in savings of postal charges but more importantly it ensures that your letters and mailers reach your addressees correctly in time. In business, communication is very important, and if it is an important communication you may lose a fortune if it is not delivered promptly. For Marketing and advertisement mailers, it is also important that they reach the prospective buyers promptly otherwise the purpose of those mailers will be defeated.

Another important factor that can’t be overlooked is that the clients feel good about their company looking after them and keeping track of them. It increases customer loyalty in the long term and has long term benefits.

It is worthwhile to invest in solutions like CASS software as in business organizations where there is regular bulk mailing it saves lot of efforts on part of employees and ensures efficient delivery. Benefits and savings add up quickly with the help of this programming and the promptness of delivery is also very high. Try it today if you have not already.

Manufacturers and distributors in all industries and regions of the world are reevaluating how their businesses impact the environment in which they operate, including their partners, customers and communities. From design and sourcing to production and distribution, manufacturers and distributors are rapidly establishing sustainability or “green” programs across their supply chain because they increasingly make real business sense. With Lawson business ERP software, companies can manage their environmental programs efficiently and achieve the green targets that many companies are now obliged to attain.

Most of these initiatives are at early stages, as companies evaluate how sustainability can become a more integral part of their business strategy, reputation and brand. Companies are focusing on their biggest cost areas and on areas that have the most significant impact on the environment. Sustainability programs leading the way for manufacturers and distributors include facility energy reduction, facility emissions reduction, and reduction of fuel consumption and emissions from their fleet and related product logistics.

Companies have also begun information technology (IT) initiatives to support their sustainability programs. However, these initiatives are far from mature. In most instances, sustainability is evolving largely as a disconnected set of activities, where individuals or departments use spreadsheets or home-grown software applications to track their efforts and report results. There is a definite need for integration and automation.

Business ERP software promises to be an important tool for companies to better manage sustainability programs across their supply chain. By using business software, companies can easily manage the sustainability programs across their entire organization in one place, gain greater visibility into their existing sustainability programs, and produce better results.

The Strategic Role of Business ERP Software in the Sustainable Supply Chain

We can break down business software’s role in sustainability programs into three elements: enterprise resource planning (ERP) software as the foundation; internal controls for governance, risk management and compliance; and enterprise performance management. Each of these levels is important to the effective execution, management and measurement of a manufacturer or distributor’s sustainability program.

The Foundation: ERP

Because ERP systems are often integrated and enterprise-wide, they can sensibly form the foundation for managing sustainability programs. One approach to the problem is to align ERP applications with the sustainability programs a company is implementing, and then incorporate internal control and enterprise performance management solutions to create a complete solution.

The reason why ERP systems can work so well as a foundation for sustainability program is that they help manage the transactions that flow through the enterprise and establish “one version of the truth.” For instance, the ERP system can show that a supplier is on the company’s preferred supplier list, which may mean the supplier meets company standards related to child labor or organic sourcing. Often, these metrics correspond to specific measurement metrics within the Global Reporting Initiative Sustainability Reporting Guidelines.

Governance, Risk Management and Compliance

Almost all sustainability programs contain elements of governance, risk management, and compliance. At this level, an internal control system allows companies to more effectively and efficiently manage these requirements ? whether government mandated or established by the company ? by providing an automated solution to manage control activities.

An internal control system can centralize the information manufacturers and distributors need to manage sustainability activities within any functional area (e.g., supply chain management) and across the enterprise. The approach focuses on four areas:

1.Documentation. Provide a central repository for all governance, risk management, and compliance-related documents that is accessible to auditors and managers, and where documents are updated as close to real time as possible.

2.Testing. Track testing activities, including what was tested, when, by whom, results, and remedial actions when testing failed.

3.User interface. Communicate all key information to the appropriate audiences through an intuitive, secure, role-based, user-defined portal.

4.Monitoring. Enable companies to manage key events and transactions within their ERP and other business applications to easily present any significant or material events to the appropriate audience.

As a result, the reporting layer can include the documentation or history of on-site audits of business practices for all the preferred suppliers listed in the ERP system.

Enterprise Performance Management

Enterprise performance management systems deliver business intelligence via dashboards, scorecards, reports and alerts that allow knowledge workers to thoroughly analyze complex problems and then take action. They are what let us know that sustainability objectives are being met or whether action needs to be taken to get the effort back on track. Role-based dashboards work as the heart of the solution and act as a gateway for sustainability activity management. Workers can quickly navigate from alerts to detailed reports to the actual transactional data.

Enterprise performance management also includes a workflow layer. The workflow layer is mandatory for managing the complex interactions of individuals engaged in sustainability activities, such as monitoring carbon dioxide emissions or energy usage. System-based controls, paperless activities, and electronic approvals promote repeatable and sustainable actions and allow manufacturers and distributors to easily monitor key events, while enabling simpler audit trails and reducing risk.

What you need to know about USPS Software.

There was a time when mail was sorted manually and the pigeon was the courier. Now it sounds like a part of a fairy tale. Nowadays advancement in technology has brought about a sea change in the entire system. The USPS is an acronym for United States Postal Service.

USPS is a government owned agency situated in the United States and is responsible for delivery of mail. USPS is one of the oldest government organizations in the USA and holds a kind of monopoly on many aspects of delivering mail. Through the USPS, citizens can send mail and parcels to almost any part of the world at reasonable prices.

The Intelligent Mail Barcode, popularly known as IMB is a new system introduced by USPS. It is a next generation of barcode technology that can be used for sorting and tracking letters and flats. It combines the capabilities of the Planet Code barcode and the POSTNET barcode into one unique form of barcode.

Many software companies design USPS software or USPS shipping software. They create and provide software solutions for direct mail, marketing, document design and data quality. Let us discuss some of its products they offer.

MaxPresort is one of the most comprehensive and powerful product for United States Postal Service bulk mailings. It is ideally suited for business which have direct marketing campaigns, or else who serve others who mail. This software helps in taking advantage of the huge postage discounts that are offered by the USPS. They can presort mail of different types like letters, NFMs, flats and parcels. This sorting is done in USPS classes -Periodicals, First-Class Mail, Package Services and Standard Mail. Apart from presorting mail, the software also has an optimization routine so that you can further maximize your discounts.

MaxPresort also supports the Intelligent Mail Barcodes. It can be used with the Basic as well as the Full Service Options and includes Intelligent Mail Container Label and the Intelligent Mail Tray Label.

Another product is the IMB Manager. This technology allows users to create an Intelligent Mail barcode for files that are generated by any type of presort or Mail.dat product. It also allows users to manage their exclusive Intelligent Mail Serial Numbers either within a single Mailer ID or else across multiple mails for the same Mailer ID. This is how it works. First, it creates all three kinds of Intelligent Mail Serial Numbers. Then it creates a database which can track the 45-day expiration dates for these Serial Numbers. The interface is intuitive and easy to use.

MaxOG is another product that uses functionality from MaxPrint, a great document creation and printing software. It can produce a wide array of documents and labels with the help of pictures, text, ovals, tables, boxes, lines and fill patterns in various font, color or orientation. By using MaxOG you will be able to create letters as well as name-and-address labels using Intelligent Mail Tray, Intelligent Mail barcodes, Container Labels and also Inkjet files.

Thus you can effectively use these products for direct mail and marketing or document designing.

The importance of keeping your mailing list names and personal data up to date and accurate can not be understated. Billions of dollars are lost every year by large and small businesses because they ship correspondence to people who have moved, send duplicate mailings, mailings to addresses that do not exists and similar mistakes. By combining data and USPS software together the benefits will be significant.

Data Quality Software is the software that can convert the existing data into an integrated format by creating new fields, merging various files, and by summarizing and filtering it. The process “Data Quality” is the reliability and effectiveness of data, particularly in a data warehouse.

Data quality is much more than just records, fields and values-it’s about establishing business. From personal decisions, customer relationship to control of inventory, operations and even regulatory compliance, quality data forms the very foundation of a successful and flourishing enterprise.

Data quality assurance (DQA) is the method employed to verify the reliability and effectiveness of a data. Maintaining data quality requires going through the data periodically and scouring it. Generally this involves updating it, standardizing it, and de-duplicating records to make a single view of the data, even if it is stored in multiple variant systems.

Since data quality is so important from a business perspective, many large companies employ a data steward to be in charge of data quality. There are many vendor applications in the market to make this job easier.

It becomes easier to match your customer’s records with the help of this software. This improves the quality of your data. Usually computers trip over or ignore if the records don’t match. For instance a computer won’t know that Mac and Mack is the same person. The system is not designed to identify the slight variations in the characters, but data quality software knows this. It uses many other parameters to check the identity of two persons/names. The software also ensures that each customer has only one profile in your computer. This can have the added advantage of properly greeting a customer online when they log in. If certain criteria match, the system can anticipate that the person or group are affiliated and properly populate data.

How significant it is to have a Data Quality Software is we can understand by the following factual example: Gartner study says that poor quality customer data costs U.S. business an estimated $611 billion dollars a year in postage, printing, and staff overhead of reading data from operational systems.

The USPS is the least expensive way to ship letters and small merchandise in general in the USA. The USPS software and Data Quality software will enhance the profitability of every business. By maintaining the cleanest data records there will be less duplicate mailings, less returned mailings, a much stronger ability to sort potential customers and track results. In the challenging time the clean interface and ease-of-use of data quality tools makes is fast and a definite for all businesses looking to maximize their marketing dollars.

What Is CASS Certification And How It Helps Us

Generally speaking, CASS or Coding Accuracy Support System is a software which helps the Postal Services to measure the efficacy of the software which maintains the hygiene of addresses. All vendors and mailers who would like to be enabled to have the USPS evaluate the efficiency of their software which matches addresses, can be offered CASS Certification.

CASS software also helps promote and improve the accuracy of the mailers’ Zip+4 carrier route along with the 5-digit coding. It enables the vendors or mailers to test the capability of their address-matching software packages. After a certain modicum of compatibility is achieved, it is ready to be certified by the Postal Services.

The CASS Certification has to be certified annually with the USPS so as to be able to meet the requirements of the current CASS Certification. The results are then returned to the mailers/vendors to enable them to correct inaccuracies by providing them with useful diagnostic methods.

To go into the detailed workings of this software, one must first look at the benefits offered by the adoption of this software. The advantages of this software are many.

• CASS software corrects and standardizes addresses and also adds the missing elements like zip codes, cities and states to make the total address complete.

• A ‘delivery point validation’, which means, that the software can verify whether a given address is deliverable or not is also possible with this software.

• It can also bring the addresses which have been renamed or renumbered up-to-date by accessing the USPS ‘locatable address conversion system’. The correct address saves the Postal Services a lot of time, money and effort.

• The futility of non-deliverable mail, unsorted mail is reduced. Also, mail which can be delivered but requires that extra push to locate the exact location is also taken care of by this software.

• The debugging and cleaning of the mailing list is possible with this type of software.

• The USPS offers discounted postage tariffs to those who use the CASS software.

However, to be eligible for the discounted postage packages, the mailer’s address list has to be verified against the Postal Services USPS database. This verification is termed “CASS Certification” and it ensures that every address on the list can be delivered to. This certification requires some points to be cleared before being accredited by the CASS certificate. Some of them include getting the mailing list checked by the Mail Preparation Services, signing a declaration that each address on the mailing list has been checked by the USPS or the address has been mailed to within one calendar year. All addresses on each list are also required to be corrected.

A major point to keep in mind while wishing to have the mailing list totally updated and current, is to send a mailing First Class or Standard with the endorsement ‘address service requested’. In case of any addresses being incorrect, information will come from the Postal services.

CASS has certainly simplified the mailing process and the tedium and futility of incorrect or undeliverable addresses has been reduced to a large extent.