Autoaddress Blog

Eircode Early Birds – Who’s getting the worms?

As I write this blog, Ireland’s postcodes are exactly four weeks old. Interest in applying the new codes has been high especially among larger organisations. 
Our first two million records are arriving this week to have Eircodes appended, and we’ve begun work to integrate Autoaddress into a number of existing and new customer websites and applications. The first of these will be live shortly.

But which industries are becoming Ireland’s Eircode Early-Adopters? Based on our experience since launch date we’ve seen six key sectors emerging and starting to implement Eircode-based solutions.

1. The Insurance Sector 

The insurance industry ‘gets’ Eircodes. For years they have struggled with identifying the geographical location of non-unique addresses and with generating single view of customer relationships for ambiguous Irish addresses. Eircodes give them the address certainty available in other jurisdictions. We are currently replacing existing address solutions with our Eircode enabled Autoaddress 2.0 software for a number of large insurance companies. For better underwriting decisions, to tackle fraud and for intelligent marketing, the underwriters are giving the new codes a warm welcome.

2. Retailers (Online & Loyalty Card Issuers) 

Like insurance companies, retailers see major benefits from Eircodes. Faster form filling, reduction in cart abandonment, more accurate delivery information and cross-selling are all reasons for using the new system. We are currently implementing a solution for a retail website that uses our “customer preferred address” mode that presents addresses in the format that customers currently use, rather than the An Post Postal Address (you may have heard one or two stories recently about resistance to that particular format!).
Companies with loyalty cards are also seeking Eircode tagging. We have also received interest in appending of other data related to the address location such as average income, housing type and sales territory IDs.

3. Banking 

The banking sector is also quick of the mark. From compliance and fraud detection, to single view of customer analysis, to upgrading location intelligence systems, Ireland’s banks will benefit greatly by adopting the new codes. Autoaddress allows bank customers to record their address in their “preferred format” and still verify the address matches the Eircode while implementing anti-fraud algorithms to detect where the address and Eircode are a deliberate mismatch.

4. Telecommunications 

Telcos use postcodes in most countries for a multitude of uses. In Ireland, Eircodes will allow rapid fault reporting by providing an Eircode (e.g DM on Twitter). This will allow quick and accurate pinpointing of coverage problems. Fraudulent account creation using ambiguous addresses is also an issue that Eircodes will minimise for the industry and as a result, the industry is another early adopter of note.

5. Government 

The public sector has already embraced Eircodes as almost 50 million public records have already been encoded as part of the Eircode project. So, mail will arrive from public bodies with Eircodes shown in the very near future. Public service websites and internal Government systems are already in the process of being upgraded to accept and use Eircodes.

6. Distribution Companies

We have had many enquiries from technically astute distributors who see the advantages of the new codes to their bottom line. The nineteen thousand small areas embedded in the ECAD database are an ideal way to organise delivery zones. We are developing solutions that optimise deliveries by dynamic reallocation of small areas between delivery zones based on overnight orders. Expect to be asked for your Eircode very soon by all the ecommerce websites that deliver via major Irish distribution companies.

7. Others

The most notable other users looking at Eircode technology are the IT industry (software distributers, SIs and IT service providers), Estate Agents and Direct Mail businesses.






That’s a snapshot of what’s happening here with regards to Eircodes, so if other Eircode Providers are seeing a similar response we can expect a fairly rapid adoption of Eircodes in the coming months.

This blog post was originally published on linkedIn