Siemens Case Study

Siemens Automatically Validates Global Address Data with Melissa

Siemens AG, based in Berlin and Munich, is an international technology group which has stood for technical prowess, innovation, quality, reliability and internationalism for over 170 years. The company maintains a central corporate master data management system which is used to validate all customer and supplier data. In order to ensure the quality of this data, Siemens has been using solutions from Melissa since 2015.

International groups like Siemens face the particular challenge of managing diverse country-specific address formats and ensuring that the data they hold is correct. Incorrect data results in significant costs, manual correction work and delays to supply and production chains.

The work required to manually identify and check address data is disproportionately high. This was the challenge which Siemens AG, like many other organisations, faced at the outset. To ensure the quality of its data, the company originally worked with a range of local address providers, but this approach was very inefficient. Data was managed at a range of different locations using different systems, which in turn used diverse formats and standards.

With Melissa we found a reliable partner who provides global, up-to-date, complete and correct reference data with powerful technology and offers this in a standardised format in compliance with data protection.
ANNA GLEISS, GLOBAL IT HEAD MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT AT SIEMENS AG

In 2015, the Siemens Group therefore decided to use a professional central solution to validate global address data. This would ensure that the corporate master data management system used a standardised address system. In order to achieve this goal, the company defined the following requirements for the solution:

• Extensive coverage of as many countries as possible worldwide, with high-quality results
• Compliance with international data protection guidelines
• Secure, encrypted processing (via HTTPS)
• Real-time and batch-mode processing options
• Input assistant to allow auto-completion of international addresses
• Free worldwide 24/7 customer support
• Validate addresses in real-time
• High system uptime

THE DECISIVE ARGUMENT: PRIVATE CLOUD

“For us, above all, it was about working with a reliable partner who could provide us with global, up-to-date, complete and correct reference data and high-performance technology – and do so in a standardised format that met all data protection requirements”, said Anna Gleiss, Global IT Head of Master Data Management at Siemens. “With Melissa, we found a provider who met these criteria. Their products cover over 240 countries and territories, and produced excellent results during in-depth testing. Our master data value centre ultimately settled on Melissa because they offer their technology as a private cloud solution using a dedicated web service.” Once the decision was made, Siemens implemented the following solutions with Melissa:

• Address Verification
• Geocoding
• Address Autocomplete
• Phone Verification
• Email Verification

The solutions were implemented step-by-step as Siemens added successive countries where it operates. Melissa’s products are integrated both into the central corporate master data management system and other applications which the whole Siemens Group uses as a central data repository. “As Melissa’s solutions are easy to integrate using a web service interface, the integration work was very straightforward”, said Hendrik Lucks, Service Owner in the master data application environment at Siemens.

Today, Melissa is primarily responsible for checking existing data at Siemens and assisting internal users in entering accurate address details in real time thanks to its auto-completion functionality. Meanwhile, a traffic-light system monitors address data quality and identifies quality trends. Siemens developed this system in collaboration with Melissa in order to visualise the quality of its data on a country-by-country basis. It analyses the result codes supplied after addresses are validated and displays them with a simplified red, yellow or green colour coding. “We were therefore able to quickly determine which datasets in our systems were high-quality or less accurate”, explained Anna Gleiss.

FASTER, MORE RELIABLE SERVICE

Since Melissa’s solutions were introduced in 2015, Siemens has reliably processed over 500 million queries for 174 countries using its dedicated web service. “Thanks to these very stable solutions, we have achieved an automation rate of over 90%”, said Gleiss. She also rates the experience of working with Melissa very highly: “Melissa reacts very quickly to our requests and offers us the right solutions to the questions that come up. And they consistently meet our service level agreements.”

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