In recent years, charities have found it increasingly difficult to raise money. One solution could be to turn to international markets to boost donations, but to do that they will need an “efficient global addressing system”, said Richard Pordes, an expert on the use of mail to raise charitable funds. He spoke at last week’s addressing summit held at the UPU's headquarters.
Pordes was one of several speakers at the summit organized by the Consultative Committee, the UPU entity representing postal-sector stakeholders at large. Customer and industry representatives shared their insight on addressing, with a view to contributing to the UPU’s broader initiative “Addressing the world: an address for everyone”. Participants discussed how improving global addressing could reduce undeliverable mail and enhance the delivery of important public services such as emergency response. They also examined the economic benefits of effective addressing and postcode systems and how standards and technology could be better used for these purposes.
Everyone’s job
“An address is everyone’s job. Customers have a duty to ensure their addresses are right and postal operators have a duty to give the tools to ensure addresses are accurate,” said Charles Prescott, Consultative Committee chair. “Posts have to be fully accountable to senders because it’s all about trust, and businesses are the main customers of Posts. We work on faith and the assumption that addresses are accurate.”
According to the United Nations Development Programme, four billion people are excluded from the rule of law for lack of a legal identity, which is directly related to the lack of addressing systems. But the lack of addresses or poor addressing systems also prevent Posts from delivering millions of pieces of mail, leading to added processing costs, affecting quality of service and hampering business. For example, a survey by the Interactive Media in Retail Group, the United Kingdom’s e-retail body, revealed that failed deliveries of online orders result in losses of up to one billion pounds a year.
Useful tools
But Posts are not the only ones responsible. Municipalities, builders and addressing software vendors, among others, also have a role in ensuring proper addressing. With some 130 different postal formats and character sets in the world, participants agreed that international mailers need better global addressing systems.
To meet this need, the UPU has developed tools such as the Universal POST*CODE database, which groups the postal code structures of its member countries. The UN agency has also developed an international addressing standard called S42, which describes the unique elements of an address within a country.
One country that is reaping the benefits of S42 is South Africa, which was first to comply with it. Using S42 in its global policy to improve postal services, the South African Post Office (SAPO) has attributed a six-digit identifier to every household in rural villages and informal settlements. When a family moves, the number moves with it. Local village agents keep track of moves and report them to the Post Office.
System improvements enabled SAPO to dramatically reduce the number of rejected items during mail processing and achieve a 99% acceptance rate after three passes on the machines.