31/05/2016

Allies is an address verification platform thats supports over 240 countries and gets updated daily with around 5000 address changes. It is used by many of the UK’s top businesses, including IKEA, the NHS, and the Post Office.

As addresses around the world come in all shapes and sizes, they are really easy to mistype. This costs Ecommerce and deliveries company millions in lost custom and missed deliveries. Allies have figured out how to return a perfect address from one filled with typos and missing or unnecessary data. They have loaded this complex logic into their PostCoder Web API and designed it so that you can look up a single accurate address from scratch, or correct all the addresses in your database in an instant. Recognising that street addressing is often not accurate enough, and sometimes doesn’t cover areas that people want deliveries to, Allies now also offer what3words within the PostCoder Web API.

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what3words is the simplest way to talk about location. It has divided the world into 3m x 3m squares, each with a unique 3 word address. The system converts GPS coordinates into 3 word addresses and vice versa – so that people can refer to any precise location in just three words.

The collaboration means existing or new businesses using PostCoder Web can now find the 3 word address for an address, or look up an address using its 3 word description. It means ecommerce sites can easily accept a 3 word address for an order on their checkout page – so customers can specify the exact 3m x 3m square of their front door or wherever they want something delivered and know they can be found. It also means delivery drivers can request a 3 word address as a complement to any existing address given in a checkout – a 3 word address means they can navigate simply to the exact location. Drivers will spend less time driving around to find properties and more time delivering parcels.

PostCoder Web works internationally and provides postcode lookup and address auto-fill in the UK using reference data from Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF®) and Ordnance Survey’s AddressBase Premium . Allies have added 3 word addresses to PostCoder Web using the simple what3words API.

“There is great synergy between Allies and what3words,” says Dan Cooper, CEO of Allies. “They’re on a mission to change the way people communicate location; our technology lets businesses adopt this new approach alongside their existing way of working with addresses.”

Chris Sheldrick, CEO of what3words, explains: “As more on-demand courier companies and logistics firms use what3words in the UK and Europe, our integration with the Allies platform means they can add a layer of accuracy to existing addresses. It improves delivery efficiency and customer satisfaction, particularly for new builds and poorly addressed rural areas. ”

For example, the postal address of Allies Computing with its 3 word address is: Allies Computing, Manor Farm Barns, Fox Road, Framingham Pigot, Norwich, NR14 7PZ, 3wa: fame.items.volunteered