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Introducing SwiftCore – Cloud Data Processing

By |2018-11-06T10:39:44+00:00December 1st, 2017|

“What if we could take everything our Cygnus clients love about Embedded Suppression. All the files in one place, control over the sequence of matches, no negotiations with individual file owners. And make it all available to developers in the cloud?” It’s November 2016 and the product team at The Software Bureau are meeting to discuss the roadmap for Swift and Cygnus. An unprecedented silence falls upon the room while everyone reflects on Andy Benson’s challenge. Seconds later and the room has erupted into a frenzy of noise and excitement. Developers are frantically drawing system diagrams on the white board and talking about Azure Cloud, Serverless tech, Planet Scale processing, data chunking and NoSQL databases. The commercial team are contemplating [...]

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A Practical Guide to GDPR Compliance for Processors

By |2018-12-18T15:57:59+00:00October 18th, 2017|

If your business takes possession of personal information such as a list of named individuals to be mailed or cleansed, then chances are you will need to make changes to your business to become compliant with GDPR. Organisations who collect, store and ‘own’ data are classified as data controllers, whereas organisations who take custody and use the data for example to print and send a direct mail campaign are classified as data processors. As of May 2018 data processors such as mailing houses, printers and data bureaux will be subject to many of the same new legal obligations enforced upon data controllers. Failing to adequately prepare your business for GDPR increases the risk of fines, but will also likely cost [...]

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Central Mailing Invest in Cygnus from The Software Bureau

By |2018-11-06T10:39:57+00:00October 12th, 2017|

About Central Mailing Services Ltd With 60 staff, 3 sites and 25 years under its belt, Central Mailing is a prominent player in the direct mail industry. The £7+ million turnover business provides end-to-end direct mail facilities to predominantly Education, Charity and Performing Arts clients. Richard Morrow, Sales Director of Central Mailing points to a strategy of continuous investment in technology and equipment as the winning formula for prolonged growth. Central Mailing provides complementary data health checks to clients alongside a full range of data processing functions within their in-house data bureau. A team of 10 data professionals process in excess of 70 jobs per day handling everything from the standard deduplication and sortation through to data hygiene work combining [...]

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Why Data Suppression is Key to Compliance with GDPR

By |2018-11-06T10:40:07+00:00May 25th, 2017|

DataIQ recently teamed up with Cygnus Embedded Suppression contributor, The Ark to produce a Whitepaper discussing data suppression and GDPR. The Whitepaper puts forth the message that deceased suppression will effectively become a legal requirement come May 2018 when GDPR comes into force. While both the legislation itself and the guidelines from ICO don’t go quite so far as naming deceased suppression as a legal obligation to achieve compliance, DataIQ make the argument that failing to undertake deceased suppression increases the likelihood of a technical breach. Falling foul of the ICO for a technical breach can cost organisations as much as 2% of group turnover (find out more about GDPR here). So how do Suppression files help organisations achieve compliance [...]

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Lean DM in the Press – The Print Business

By |2016-12-28T13:36:31+00:00October 25th, 2016|

Gareth Ward, Editor of Print Business magazine visited The Software Bureau last month. The conversation quickly turned to Lean DM and the mission to eradicate waste from direct mail campaigns. Gareth was keen to learn how print businesses and mail producers are profiting from bringing their data services front of house. Click here to read the article from Print Business magazine. Download your copy here Free Introduction to Lean DM To learn more about Lean DM why not download your free 30-page guide. Should you wish to arrange a demonstration of Cygnus or undertake a free trial, please contact us.

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Lean DM – Focus On Error Reduction and Increased Revenues

By |2016-12-28T14:26:33+00:00September 6th, 2016|

We can all recount those horrible moments when we realise a mailing has gone wrong. If you are lucky the job hasn’t left the building, but invariably the first you know about it is when you receive that dreaded, irate call from the client. Then comes that sickening feeling while you retrace the steps of the job only to find the error occurred in data preparation. During a particularly high pressure week, one of the data processing team accidentally sorted the surname column of a data file independently of the other columns and every mailer was sent with an incorrect surname. With many mail producers these high impact errors can have huge financial consequences and cripple the reputation of the [...]

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Lean DM – Focus on Name and Address Quality

By |2017-01-11T21:55:58+00:00August 25th, 2016|

Have you ever received a piece of mail, taken a glance at the address block and had to double take? Something doesn’t look quite right. A company asking you to spend hundreds or even thousands of pounds has just written to you as Mrs Ian Wilson rather than Mr Ian Wilson. Although deep down you know this is most likely an administration error, you can’t help but feel a little slighted. It also begs the question ‘if they can’t even get my name right, what is the experience going to be like dealing with them if I became a customer?’. 70% of consumers expect their data to be right every time. DataIQ – GDPR Identifying its impact on marketers and [...]

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Lean DM – Focus on Intelligent Deduplication

By |2017-01-11T22:08:27+00:00August 17th, 2016|

On occasion we have all received the same piece of mail multiple times. Maybe we signed up to a service twice or made two frequent purchases from a website or donated to a charity over the phone and also by post. Regardless of the reason, it feels like a waste and as a consumer you know somewhere down the line you are paying for that waste. Failure to effectively remove duplicates from a mailing file can also have greater consequences. One high profile charity donor received more than 10 duplicate appeal packs and immediately and publicly withdrew their support for the charity. His viewpoint ‘you obviously don’t need my support if you can afford to waste money sending me all [...]

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Lean DM – Focus on Goneaway and Deceased Suppression

By |2017-01-11T22:10:53+00:00August 10th, 2016|

Around 1.5 million people move house each year and over 500,000 people unfortunately pass away. This level of constant change can lead to data decaying at rates of over 30% per year for some organisations. The Office of National Statistics estimate up to 110 items of mail can be sent to the deceased in the 12 months after their death. Sending mail to people who have died or moved house is more than just a waste of printing and postage costs. When a business chooses to send mail without removing these recipients the only message being communicated is ‘the brand does not care about its customers’. Relatives of the deceased or new occupants are of course highly likely to see [...]

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Lean DM – Focus on Home Mover Tracking

By |2020-03-05T15:48:54+00:00July 29th, 2016|

Introducing Home Mover Tracking In the first in a series of 5 in-focus articles we take a closer look at home mover tracking as a component of Lean DM. Home mover tracking is about ensuring mail reaches its intended recipient when they move house. According to the Direct Marketing Association 1.5 million people move house every year in the UK and most of us don’t inform everyone that sends us mail that we have moved. The challenge for marketers is to stop the hundreds or sometimes thousands of pounds they spent capturing that prospect or customer from disappearing when they move. A Marketing No-Brainer Data decay from home movers can strike body blows to marketing return on investment figures. The [...]

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