Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Uptime
- Do you offer SLAs for your services and what is your uptime record?
- Do you have globally distributed, redundant networks to ensure reliability?
When working with a third party data quality vendor, you want to make sure that you’re aware of exactly what to expect from your provider so there is no miscommunication between you once you begin your partnership. You also want to make sure that your data quality provider has the necessary bandwidth to accommodate your business needs. Make sure that your chosen provider offers 99.9% uptime, because long sessions of downtime means that you can’t input records, accept webforms, or are allowing bad data to slip into your systems due to manual entry.
Not only does Melissa guarantee 99.9% uptime, we also operate numerous redundant, distributed server farms, routing traffic to the closest server, so you’re getting the highest response times. And our redundancy makes sure that if your server does experience any issues, traffic is automatically rerouted and redistributed so you’re affected as little as possible. Find more information on Melissa’s server locations and uptimes here.
Industry Experience
- How extensive is your experience in the industry, within the context of data quality solutions?
- How do your solutions benefit organizations in our industry?
You want to make sure that the data quality vendor that you choose has extensive experience with data quality. Vendors with this deep industry background will possess more specialized knowledge and understand the unique challenges and nuances within data quality. It’s also important to ask about their experience with your particular industry to make sure they understand your unique challenges. These questions also ensure that your chosen vendor understands industry standards and compliance requirements for both data quality and your specific industry.
Melissa has 38+ years of data quality experience and we are an industry leader in address verification with USPS® CASS™ and DPV® & Canada Post® SERP® Certification. We are also SOC 2, HIPAA/HITECH, FedRAMP and GDPR compliant, among others. We don’t just license the USPS database—our proprietary engine is constantly evolving to fine tune our rule sets and update our data to best meet our customers’ needs.
Also, be sure to check out our pages dedicated to how we help our most popular industries. If you don’t see yours, be sure to reach out and ask! We have many use cases we’d love to share with you.
Companion Products and Support
- Are there companion products or additional services available to support other aspects of contact data management that may arise during your usage?
- How do they integrate with the core offering?
Ask about the breadth of services offered when looking for a data quality vendor, and make sure that all of their products work seamlessly together. Sometimes, issues beyond your initial concern may arise, and working with a data quality vendor that offers supplementary tools and products will allow for a quick, easy resolution.
Melissa offers a full spectrum of data quality tools that cleanse and verify, enrich, match and merge, and monitor your data. Our solutions are flexible and customizable to fit your specific business needs, and are available via our service bureau, as web APIs, plugins, or on-premises.
Data Coverage and Sources
- What is the extent of your data coverage in terms of geographic regions and data types?
- Can you specify the sources from which you derive your data?
Make sure that your data quality vendor is transparent with their data coverage, as well as what sources they get their data from. You want to know that your data quality vendor’s tools align with the global reach of your business, as well as determine what sources they gather data from. If there is more than one data source, and those sources are trusted, you can be assured of more reliable and accurate data.
Melissa offers data solutions for 240+ countries and territories. Check out Melissa’s global data coverage on our wiki or on this map.
We also get our data from a wide variety of government, telco, and credit sources, among others, and not just the USPS. With these sources, you can be more confident that your customers’ data is correct. This also allows us to offer data quality solutions such as rooftop geocoding and identity verification.
OEM Provider or Reseller Status
- Are you the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of the services you provide, or do you act as a reseller for another provider?
Make sure that you know whether or not your data quality vendor is the original manufacturer or acts as a reseller for someone else, so you are making the most informed decision for your business. Knowing if you’re working with an OEM or a reseller helps you understand the control and reliability of the solution you’re interested in. An OEM will have more control over their product and have a deeper level of expertise with it. With a reseller, you may want to research further to verify the stability and transparency of the solutions you will be implementing.
Melissa offers ways to become an OEM or resell partner. This offers numerous benefits such as adding value to your already existing product stack, generating recurring revenue through referral bonuses or our subscription model, and joint marketing and sales collaboration. We offer best-of-class customer service, and with a 94% renewal rate, you can see that our customers are very satisfied!
Check out our partnership program to get more information on how you can embed, implement, refer and resell Melissa’s solutions. Ready to get started with Melissa? Let us know how we can help you today!
Why Melissa?
Melissa’s Global Address Verification service verifies addresses for 240+ countries and territories at the point of entry and in batch to ensure only valid billing and shipping addresses are captured and used in your systems. We leverage a postal certified address engine using official government data including CASS (USPS), SERP (Canada Post), PAF (Royal Mail) and more. As the “Address Experts”, Melissa remains committed to providing leading-edge data quality solutions to businesses and organizations worldwide, leveraging more than 35 years of industry expertise.