Why Location Intelligence Is Important

A recent Toronto Star article presented a very interesting story related to address and location. In short, the article discusses the issues a woman named Elayne Tanner faces as a result of her postal address, tax boundary and physical location not matching up. If the comments are any indication, this is a fairly common issue in rural and even some urban areas. One key statement worth pointing out from the article that explains part of the problem is as follows: “As cities grow and amalgamate, historic systems like the postal code and area code distribution have not been able to reflect new municipal boundaries.”

The article highlights the multitude of challenges related to address management and the confusion that can arise as a result of multiple boundaries encompassing an address, such as trouble receiving deliveries. The implications of this address confusion in the business world are seemingly endless. If Ms Tanner called a cable company to switch to a new service, would they be able to find her proper location and issue a quote? Would an insurance company have an accurate idea of where her house was located when determining whether to issue her a policy? Even worse, in the event of an emergency, would an ambulance be routed to the correct location? This all underscores the importance of organizations using Location Intelligence to provide clarity and context for their addresses.

DMTI’s products such as Location Hub^® can help organizations deal with the confusing nature of addresses such as the situation presented in the article. In addition to combining the many possible variations of Ms Tanner’s address that can exist in a database with various municipalities and postal codes, our products can also assign geographic coordinates, taking the guess work out of where a property is actually located. With municipalities and postal codes changing over time, DMTI’s database stays up to date, providing organizations with accurate information that helps them in their day-to-day operations.

To test our system, we actually processed Ms Tanner’s challenging address. DMTI’s Location Hub was able to find her civic address in Milton, the affiliated postal address in Rockwood, and returned geographic coordinates. An organization using Location Hub would be able to enter multiple variations on Elayne’s address and correctly find and map her address. No missed deliveries or confusion with the GPS!