Alpha has built its reputation on delivering low cost, high quality international telecom services for the consumer market. The Alpha brand was established in 1996 and is now one of Europe's largest alternative telecommunications resellers. Specialising in prepaid telecommunications services, Alpha now commands a major share of the UK prepaid telephony market.

Alpha Telecom is a fully operating division of the TELE2 Group.

Tele2 is Europe's leading alternative telecoms operator offering some of the market's best prices. With their unique values, they provide cheap and simple telecom services throughout Europe. They have over 29 million customers across 25 countries. Tele2 offer a broad range of products and services in fixed and mobile telephony, Internet access, data networks, cable TV and content services. The company was originally founded in 1993 by Jan Stenbeck and has been listed on Stockholms- börsen (the Swedish stock exchange) since 1996.

Alpha Telecom's website offers simple and easy registration for the telephone services offered. An important part of the registration process involves collecting a customer address. It is essential that this address is postally correct, for both billing and registration purposes.

The web form for registration had for some time included an address lookup feature, accessing Royal Mail's PAF^® (Postcode Address File) data to help customers complete the online registration process quickly and efficiently, as well as maintaining the quality of the Alpha Telecom customer database. Initially Alpha Telecom held and maintained their own copy of PAF^® for this purpose. However, they reviewed this part of their data collection and decided to look for an alternative way of managing address collection on their site. They did not want to move away from using PAF^®, as this is the definitive UK Postal address database. However, they hoped to find a supplier who could host and maintain the data for them, whilst offering competitive rates to cover both the PAF^® licence and support.

After conducting some desk research, particularly using the Internet, searching for suppliers of PAF^® solutions, Alpha Telecom came across the PostCoder Web SOAP Service offered by Allies Computing Ltd. They were looking for a hosted PAF^® data address lookup solution, with better pricing and good support service - PostCoder Web SOAP offered them a solution that met all these requirements.

As well as attractive price options, Allies web service offers a wide range of usable examples including the ASP.NET examples which were used by Alpha Telecom's developers. "I found the examples easy to follow and use. We had Allies PostCoder Web service integrated into our website within a couple of hours of registering for the free 21 day trial" says Andy Cook, Developer for Alpha Telecom.

The benefits of moving to PostCoder Web were immediately seen both in cost and time. Having the hosted service meant Alpha Telecom no longer had to worry about updating their PAF^® but continued to benefit from collecting postally correct addresses; doing this at the outset represents a time and cost saving across the board - something that Alpha Telecom had already recognized when they set up their original PAF^® based system. Customers are happier when they don't have to repeatedly type their full address, and levels of first time delivery are significantly higher as a result of consistently postally valid addresses. More recently, verifying addresses has also been recognized to assist in fighting fraud.

One of the more positive things about the Allies service from the outset was that it offered a true "try before you buy." All customers are given the chance to run the service live from their site or server for thirty days on a trial basis before committing to purchase.

Paul Musgrave from Alpha Telecom says "We were provided with the free look ups to start, with which we established we could use and integrate the service into our website. The trial was very good and we could see it was exactly what we wanted".

Throughout the mid telecoms industry Windows is more frequently used so it made sense for Alpha Telecom to make sure their software was compatible with the majority. All their software is Microsoft and the main development language is ASP.NET. Like all Allies solutions, PostCoder Web SOAP offer examples and Help Files for all the major Microsoft development languages.

Ritchie UK Limited, a printing company, supplies a vast array of paper-based products from colour manuals to betting slips.

Part of their service involves taking orders from Barclays merchants for the delivery of PDQ till rolls. The software for this purpose, used by the call centre staff, was developed in 2004.

The address look up functionality was not always present in their software and was added at a later date. Ritchie UK Limited decided to integrate address lookup into their order entry program in order to optimise their service by collecting postally correct, validated addresses at the outset. The developer of their order programme had never used the Allies PostCoder solutions previously but this was recommended by a user of his system who had used it at a previous company.

The development team found that the PostCoder Web service was very easy to implement, and they were quickly able to get it up and running with their application.

Ritchie (UK) Limited developers were delighted with the solution. Paul Mathewson commenting, after the service had been successfully implemented, that the technical support was "very helpful" and the service itself "simple, easy to use, easy to implement ... an all round great product". Pricing plans were simple and catered for both small and large usage.

Call centre staff using the application were immediately very pleased with the new function. Particular pluses were that it was easy to use from the start and meant they could not only take orders much faster, but also make sure that the addresses entered are correct and postally valid, without the need to ask customers to repeat or spell things.

Godfrey DIY started in Norwich in 1983 and has grown steadily over that time to become East Anglia's leading independent DIY and garden store.

The company has 6 retail outlets as well as a strong online presence. The product range is broad and competitively priced and includes garden furniture, garden machinery, power tools and decorating products, as well as an impressive selection of home products including flat pack furniture, lighting and window fashion.

Their Web application was developed in-house in December 2006 and serves two objectives; firstly to provide an additional means for existing regional customers to find information (to enhance press and TV advertising) and secondly to create additional sales UK-wide.

When the Website was migrated from a third party to their in-house application, they sacrificed address-lookups initially, but quickly realised how essential address verification was. The main concern was failed deliveries due to incorrectly addressed parcels. This was costing them time and money, as well as inconveniencing customers unnecessarily. Another benefit of the address lookup software is that it has speeded up the checkout process considerably and made it much simpler and quicker for customers to place an order.

"We found Allies Computing's PostCoder Web SOAP service using a Google search. Allies' response was so prompt and positive that we felt we didn't need or want to talk to anyone else! Using SOAP, the Web service uses a protocol that is very easy for our developers to integrate into our PHP application. We also received some very helpful technical advice from Allies." Barry Godfrey, Managing Director.

Since adding address lookup back into the Website, Godfrey's Web Despatch team have more confidence in the reliability of the address data. They also incorporated the lookup into their intranet so that they had the ability to verify addresses where customers had modified the address data in anyway.

Along with adding the address lookup to the checkout stages, some other modifications were also made. Since then, there has been a marked reduction in the 'drop out' rate at the various stages of the checkout.

Asked if Barry had any comments about Allies' service or technical support, his reply was "Yes… incredibly helpful and prompt. I was surprised at the extent you were willing to help us."

"We have been using the PostCoder address lookup service from Allies on our Website and we are very impressed by the ease with which it slotted into our application. With their very helpful support team, Allies made the whole process as painless as possible. Now we have address lookup functionality added to our site I am very confident that we have minimised the possibility of customer drop-off at the checkout. The service is very realistically priced, and I regard it as a very effective tool in protecting us against failed deliveries due to addressing errors. "

Merus Software Limited provides software for websites that receive a large amount of transactions on a daily basis. One of their customers is DSGi Business, the leading specialist provider of IT solutions to business and the public sector. DSGi Business is part of DSG International plc (DSGi), who also own other well known brands such as PC World, Dixons.co.uk and Currys, for which Merus runs a total of four websites using its Merus mercatum^TM software.

The Merus software was developed during 2001 - 2005 and it's tightly integrated into a back office system to exchange prices, stock levels, accounts, orders and invoices.

DSGi Business websites sell computers, consumables, electronics and various IT-related products to the UK business and public sector community. They approached Merus in November 2005 to request an address lookup facility within their website and Merus integrated the solution offered by Allies Computing.

Merus did try another supplier of online address lookup initially, but commented that "their API was not good enough and we cancelled a PO that had already been made out to them, to go with the Allies' web service solution."

Merus found the PostCoder Web SOAP service easy to integrate and this was the main reason for choosing Allies Computing over the other supplier. It took them only half a day to have a pilot up and running. They currently develop in Java.

Following the launch of the address lookup service within the DSGi Business websites, feedback has been positive and the level of orders that were previously rejecting by their back office has decreased.

Merus have not yet tested the technical support services that Allies Computing offer, which Christian Dannemann, Managing Director of Merus says "is a good sign. The services you provide have been without fault."

Craig Williams, e-commerce Manager for DSGi Business also comments:

"Allies Computing provides us with a low cost, easy to implement solution that allows our customers to enter the correct address on their orders. The costs involved in miss-shipments and other mistakes in this area can be considerable. Since implementing Allies PostCoder, we have seen a considerable reduction in these costs."

Chocolate Now! is an internet retailer specialising in luxury Belgian chocolate gifts. They allow the customer to create their own custom box of chocolates online, choosing each chocolate individually and then selecting from a wide range of gift wraps. The gift is then dispatched directly to the final recipient, along with a personal message from the sender.

Because the Chocolate Now! website offers the customer such a wide degree of flexibility, it was not possible to use an off-the-shelf shopping cart so a custom system had to be built from scratch. The shopping cart was originally developed in 2005 and is being continually improved, adding new services and enhancing the customer experience.

Initially customers were required to type the delivery address in manually. However, because over 90% of purchases are gifts being sent directly to the recipient rather than to the cardholder, a significant number of customers were entering incorrect or incomplete delivery addresses. They decided to implement an automated address lookup to try and resolve the issue. Customers now have it made easy - they either simply enter the Postcode and the delivery address is completed automatically for them, or they can enter the address details they know, and the full address and Postcode is looked up for them!

Chocolate Now! chose the Allies PostCoder Web SOAP service because of the flexible pricing structure which provides an affordable entry level solution while offering significant discounts as turnover increases. The SOAP interface also allowed them to develop their own user interface using Perl and JavaScript giving the same "look and feel" as the rest of their website.

"The getMatchAddress and getThrfareAddress examples allowed our developers to get a basic system up and running quickly. We then made some modifications to provide our users with an interface that matched the style of our site."
Nigel Croft, Chocolate Now!

Since implementing the address lookup, Chocolate Now! has seen a 50% reduction in the number of non arrivals reported by customers. It has also significantly reduced the workload on administrative staff who were previously performing manual checks on incomplete addresses.

"We have always found Allies customer service and technical support to be very prompt and helpful. Once the system was set up and working, we have had remarkably few problems."

"The 21 day free trial was ideal - it allowed us to do our development and perform extensive testing before going live, and to iron out any minor problems before we started paying for the service. We are very pleased with the Allies system. It is robust, reliable and easily pays for itself by reducing the number of queries our staff has to deal with."
Nigel Croft, Chocolate Now!