Global Gateways

After spending a lot of time and effort creating multilingual websites with local pages, most companies then treat the gateway to their sites as an afterthought. Global gateways need to be created with care and common sense.  Read more in my blog post here.

Time to Open Up and Tell All!

It's time for posts to open up and tell people outside their countries how to use their systems.  My new blog post here

I've been a little remiss in updating this blog as most of my posts are currently going onto other sites.  Here's what you may have missed in the past few months:

Validate ... Intelligently looks at how address validation needs to be applied sensibly and not just installed and then forgotten about.

In Size does Matter I investigate how long an address (and the elements within it) can be - and you may be surprised by the answer.

A couple of posts look at the differences between cultures and address systems on either side of a border.  First there's Borderlands, looking at the differences on either side of the Dutch/German border. Then there's Borderlands - the address conundrum, looking at how German addresses are structured.

Humbug? looks at the dangers of making assumption about the holidays and calendars used by people around the world.

The Hidden Returns On Your Data Quality Investment

Measuring the return of investment of data quality initiatives is problematic as many of the returns are hidden and/or are in areas of the business, or outside it, where measurement is problematic.  Read more in my guest blog over at Loqate here.

The Rise and Rise of E-Commerce

My first guest blog post for Loqate looks at the rise and rise of e-Commerce, and how the move of commerce to the Internet, with its inherent global nature, and where personal dialogue is missing, brings new challenges.  Read it here.

Stop Blaming the Customer!

Customers are the easiest to blame when we are looking at data collection problems, whereas these are almost entirely down to poor business processes and practices.  If you're still blaming the customer for your poor data quality it's time to stand back and review your own work.  Read more at my latest PostcodeAnywhere guest blog post.

What’s in a Name?

Some cultures have a wide variety of names. Others have a very limited pool, and this may be the result of cultural or legal aspects.  Read more in my latest PostcodeAnywhere blog post: What's in a Name?