Business-focused custom software

I really enjoy helping a customer make good use of technology. This week I am writing code that processes street addresses. The code cleans excess spaces, and replaces words used in street addresses like "Avenue" and "North" with consistent abbreviations. The code will also validate the addresses, so that we aren't saving an address without a street name or zip code, etc.

All this processing helps my customer to keep a clean address database, which will their mailings will be sent out with fewer problems. And since some of these addresses are published for others to use, it will mean fewer phone calls with data problems. .

There are plenty of times when technology cannot solve a problem. But data cleaning is a great example of how to use technology to improve your business. Repetitive work is great to push to the computer so that your people resources can focus on things that require human attention.