Improving your organisation’s address data

Address data sits at the heart of most organisations; from understanding where your customers live, to where your assets are located. How can you make sure the address data your organisation uses is accurate, and therefore effective?

Proactive address management can have a big impact, resulting in improved customer satisfaction, increased efficiencies, and resource savings. Below are a few ways in which you can start to better understand, and improve your address data.

Auditing your address data

Before improvements can be made, it’s important to gain a clear view of the current state of your address data. Many organisations have issues with data silos, and may have multiple address datasets with different formats that are not integrated or aligned. This can be due to data being sourced from multiple origins, or data being created or used for different purposes.

A good first step involves gaining a holistic understanding of these different datasets, and the processes and functions that rely on them. For example, within utilities companies, there may be separate datasets for the addresses of customers, assets, and meters, as well as purposes such as a Priority Services Register.

Understanding the different uses and requirements of your address data will ensure that any actions taken will improve business processes and address quality, and meet the needs of your users and stakeholders.

Unique identifiers

To enable your address data to be interoperable and dynamic, unique identifiers should be implemented. A unique identifier is a distinct value or code assigned to each feature within a dataset which uniquely distinguishes each feature and creates consistency. It also allows for information to be cross-referenced across datasets, and allows for address lifecycle management.

The Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) is the authoritative identifier, used to uniquely identify addressable locations in Great Britain. It is the unique identifier used in OS’s National Geographic Database (NGD) under the address theme, and can also be found within both OS’s AddressBase Suite of products and the OS Places API. The UPRN is an open-source dataset, so can be used by any organisation within Great Britain.

By using the UPRN, your data can be easily aligned and integrated with OS data, allowing for additional insights from OS data such as address type, classification, and geospatial location. This is especially important for public sector organisations due to the Government Digital Services mandate on the use of the UPRN for addressing data. Additionally, the UPRN can even be integrated with data from other organisations within Great Britain; for example, Energy Performance Certificates.

Quality at source

Having decided upon your unique identifier, it is important to ensure that all new address data entering your organisation is properly validated. Assigning a unique identifier to addresses as they enter your organisation will ensure long-term integrity in your business systems.

This can be achieved through Ordnance Survey’s OS Places API. This has been successfully applied by various organisations to proactively assign a UPRN to addresses as they are recorded, ensuring that all data has a UPRN where possible. It can also be used to automatically infill the address fields with quality address information from OS, removing the risk of mistakes or spelling errors from manual inputting of addresses. OS Places API, as well as the OS NGD Address theme, is updated daily, ensuring that any decisions are based on the most current and accurate information.

Address cleansing and matching

Address cleansing and matching refers to the process of removing inaccurate addresses, improving address consistency, and ensuring that all addresses are matched to the selected unique identifier.

Once the data validation process has been implemented, existing addresses can be cleansed to ensure consistency. For example, you may choose to standardise certain wording such as ‘St’ (as opposed to ‘St.’ or ‘Saint’) or remove shortenings (e.g. replacing ‘1st’ with ‘first’).

Once the address data has been cleansed, it can be matched to the unique identifier. In the case of the UPRN, this can be achieved using methods such as OS Places API, or OS’s bespoke address matching service for Energy and Infrastructure organisations.

Support from OS

If you want to improve your organisation’s address data, please get in touch with us. OS has a broad range of addressing products and services, from OS NGD Address and AddressBase suite of products, to our addressing APIs, and bespoke services for Energy and Infrastructure organisations offered by our Consultancy Services team.