Preparing Your Data
Before populating your data warehouse, you should ensure that your data is of good quality, and that it has all the attributes necessary to provide meaningful insights to business users. One common approach is to use an operational data store (ODS) for this purpose. An ODS is a database where you can perform data quality operations that prepare your data for loading into the data warehouse. Spectrum Technology Platform has a variety of features that can be implemented in an ODS to improve the quality of your data and also augment your data with spatial, demographic, or other data. If you currently do not have the following features licensed, contact Precisely for more information.
Parsing, Name Standardization, and Name Validation
To perform the most accurate standardization you may need to break up strings of data into multiple fields. Spectrum Technology Platform provides advanced parsing features that enable you to parse personal names, company names, and many other terms and abbreviations. In addition, you can create your own list of custom terms to use as the basis of scan and extract operations. Spectrum Universal Name provides this functionality.
Deduplication and Consolidation
Identifying unique entities enables you to consolidate records, eliminate duplicates and develop "best-of-breed" records. A "best-of-breed" record is a composite record that is built using data from other records. Spectrum Advanced Matching and Spectrum Data Normalization provide this functionality.
Address Validation
Address validation applies rules from the appropriate postal authority to put an address into a standard form and even validate that the address is a deliverable address. Address validation can help you qualify for postal discounts and can improve the deliverability of your mail. Spectrum Universal Addressing provides this functionality.
Geocoding
Geocoding is the process of taking an address and determining its geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude). Geocoding can be used for map generation, but that is only one application. The underlying location data can help drive business decisions. Reversing the process, you can enter a geocode (a point represented by a latitude and longitude coordinate) and receive address information about the geocode. Spectrum Enterprise Geocoding provides this functionality.
Location Intelligence
Location intelligence creates new information about your data by assessing, evaluating, analyzing and modeling geographic relationships. Using location intelligence processing you can verify locations and transform information into valuable business intelligence. Spectrum Spatial provides this functionality.
Tax Jurisdiction Assignment
Tax jurisdiction assignment takes an address and determines the tax jurisdictions that apply to the address's location. Assigning the most accurate tax jurisdictions can reduce financial risk and regulatory liability.
Spectrum Technology Platform software from Precisely integrates up-to-date jurisdictional boundaries with the exact street addresses of your customer records, enabling you to append the correct state, county, township, municipal, and special tax district information to your records. Some example uses of tax jurisdiction assignment are:
- Sales and use tax
- Personal property tax
- Insurance premium tax
Spectrum Enterprise Tax provides this functionality.