28 August 2006

Capscan Reduces Failed Mailings and Increases Staff Productivity for Best Western

Best Western Hotels Selects Address Management Solution Matchcode To Ensure Clean Contact Database

Capscan, a leading supplier of international address management solutions and data integrity services, today announced that the independent hotel group Best Western Hotels Great Britain has integrated Matchcode into its in-house CRM system. The implementation has lowered the number of failed mailings, reduced address data entry time and improved productivity of its 150 users.

From the central office in York, Best Western is using Capscan's fully functional address management system, Matchcode, to validate and correct the address data that is inputted into its CRM system from sales personnel, reservation system and website. The CRM system holds information regarding more than 10,000 past guests, future bookings, individual and corporate prospects, travel agent partners and member hotel data.

Head of IT at Best Western Hotels Great Britain, Mike Goryl, explains the reasons for selecting Capscan, "Matchcode provides better value for money, improved flexibility and functionality, as well as smoother integration into our in-house CRM system, in comparison to our previous address management software."

When an address is being entered into the system, it is automatically compared with the 27 million addresses in Royal Mail's Postcode Address File (PAF). Using Matchcode's 'fuzzy matching' process, abbreviations, mis-spellings or incomplete address are identified and immediately corrected to ensure that the Best Western Great Britain database is populated with only accurate and up-to-date address and names information.

"In addition to reducing the number of failed mailings and their associated related costs, Matchcode has delivered further benefits in terms of increased staff productivity due to the reduced numbers of keystrokes required when entering address data into the CRM system," adds Goryl.

Managing Director of Capscan, Terry Hiles, comments, "The average full UK address takes 48 key strokes. This is reduced to approximately seven to 10 for the 150 users at Best Western's central office, saving a lot of time and ensuring the address entered is correct and valid."

About Best Western

Best Western Hotels Great Britain, part of Best Western International, is the largest group of independently owned and managed hotels in GB. Best Western currently has over 300 member hotels in GB and over 4,000 hotels in 80 countries worldwide, which are all independently owned and managed.