Canada Post’s Software Evaluation and Recognition Program (SERP) is your guarantee that an address quality solution meets Canada Post’s minimum standards for validating and correcting addresses. In order to obtain SERP certification, products such as nCode must successfully process test data provided by Canada Post. In order to qualify for postage discounts based on address accuracy, Canada Post requires your addresses to be processed by a SERP certified product.

nCode meets and exceeds SERP certification requirements. You should demand SERP certification from your address quality solution.

In the past, Canada Post provided a three-tier rating system (A,B,C) for products on their SERP list. For the past several years, they have discontinued this practice and now simply list products as being SERP certified without making quality distinctions amongst them.

Canada Post does still note whether the products listed are capable of “Address Correction”, “Address Validation”, or “Postal Code Lookup”. nCode is capable of all three.

While Canada Post was still providing competitive rankings, nCode always achieved the highest rating (“A”).

To learn more about Canada Post’s address quality standards and their SERP list visit their website at: www.canadapost.ca and search for “SERP”.

Canada Post provides a number of products and services to assist organizations with the management of their Canadian postal addresses. One of the most important of these is SERP, which provides your with an assurance that your address accuracy software meets the minimum requirements set out by Canada Post.

Some other address management products and services available from Canada Post include:

• Presort Recognition List – A list of software applications that has been certified to sort addresses in such a way as to make it less costly for Canada Post to deliver large mailings. This is of interest to mailing houses and organizations who prepare their own bulk mailings.
  
  
• National Change of Address – The NCOA is a service whereby businesses and individuals can register to have mail forwarded to a new address. Canada Post will sell this list to interested parties. While this product can provide some value, users of it must understand its limitations.
  
  
• Canadian Addressing Guide – This document provides guidelines for consistent and accurate addressing that will be compatible with Canada Post’s mail handling technology.
  
  
• Postal Code Data Products – Canada Post provides a number of raw data products on an annual subscription basis. These products include address information as well as some coarse demographics of interest to those preparing unaddressed (bulk) mailings.

For more information regarding Canada Post’s address management offerings, go to their website at www.canadapost.ca and search for “address management”.

Yes, nCode allows you to define as many different address layouts as your organization requires. You can also configure nCode to be as strict or as forgiving as you desire in terms of standardizing the formatting of addresses, including enforcing capitalization, standard address keywords, punctuation, use of accents, and others.

Yes, nCode can process all Canadian postal addresses. Note, however, that Canada Post does not distinguish between addresses which are businesses and those which are residences. Canada Post does indicate addresses which are “large volume receivers” (LVRs). These addresses are typically large businesses or residential apartment buildings. This is somewhat different from the approach taken by the U.S. Postal Service, which differentiates government, business, high rise (residential) and residential addresses.

Rural mailing addresses are handled by nCode according to Canada Post rules. Canada Post requires address accuracy products to permit any supplied delivery information that is accompanied by a valid rural postal code.

Note that Canada Post does not provide information regarding the rural street numbering used by emergency services. nCode is therefore not aware of these street numbers.

Yes, nCode fully supports French addresses, including accents and the translation and placement of address keywords. For organizations that have systems which cannot process accented characters, nCode can be configured to omit the accents.

Any non-Canadian address is recognized by nCode as such. These addresses are reported by nCode as being “foreign”.

Nova is a customer-driven organization. We have always responded to our customers’ address quality needs as they evolve and we will continue to do so. Of course, nCode will continue to be enhanced as required in order to maintain SERP certification as Canada Post changes their requirements over time.

When Canada Post expands the level of address data detail which they will provide to include specific street and unit/apartment numbers, nCode will be enhanced to handle this additional information.

Despite the fact that Canadian and U.S. addresses appear to be very similar, the rules enforced by Canada Post and the U.S. Postal Service are surprisingly different. For this reason, Nova believes that each country demands a distinct product capable of dealing with the unique demands of its postal service. Nova is developing a product that will handle U.S. addresses which has all of the quality and technical excellence that users of nCode have come to expect. This product will be available as soon as it can be certified by the USPS under the CASS program.

There are some address management functions which are not part of nCode’s capabilities and which are not planned for imminent implementation. These are typically functions which are not of wide applicability or which our customers have expressed very little interest in up until now. These functions include:

• Householder database – Canada Post does not provide the details of individuals who reside at particular addresses. nCode is based on data provided by Canada Post and therefore householders are not known to nCode.
  
  
• NCOA – The national change of address database is a special subset of householder information derived from the mail forwarding requests filed voluntarily by some businesses and people when they move. Although this information can be acquired from Canada Post its limitations reduce its value.
  
  
• Presortation – nCode does not have a bulk mail presortation feature. This type of functionality is of particular interest to bulk mailing houses and manufacturers of mailing machinery.

The nCode Programmer’s Toolkit provides a consistent interface across the widest set of platforms in the industry. You can run the nCode engine natively on these platforms:

• Microsoft Windows (9x, NT, 2000, XP, 2003)
• HP-UX
• Sun Solaris
• Linux
• AIX
• AS/400
• MVS

The nCode configuration utility is a Microsoft Windows application that allows you to create nCode configuration files that may be deployed as-is to any supported platform. You may use these configuration files to preset your nCode preferences or you may set them at runtime via the nCode API.

The nCode Batch Utility provides powerful batch address processing across the widest set of platforms in the industry. You can run the nCode Batch Utility natively on these platforms:

• Microsoft Windows (9x, NT, 2000, XP, 2003)
• HP-UX
• Sun Solaris
• Linux
• AIX
• AS/400
• MVS

Any platform that supports SOAP-based web services can use nCode Web Services edition. You can run the nCode Web Services server component natively on any of the following platforms:

• Microsoft Windows (NT, 2000, XP, 2003)
  
• HP-UX
  
• Sun Solaris
  
• Linux
  

Virtually any programming language can be used to access nCode’s powerful address quality functionality. This includes:

• C, C++
  
• Java - using Java Native Interface (JNI)
  
• Visual Studio and Visual Studio.NET (including VB, VB.NET, C#, J#, etc.)
  
• PowerBuilder
  
• Delphi
  
• COBOL
  
• RPG/400
  

…and many others. Any language that can access DLLs, callable libraries, or SOAP-based web services can use nCode.

The nCode database is stored in a proprietary format that does not require any third-party database licensing. In fact, the nCode database is a single, binary identical file – approximately 10MB in size – which can be used as-in on any supported platform. The nCode engine automatically resolves all platform-specific issues (ASCII vs. EBCDIC, little endian vs. big endian) at runtime.

Your applications can run on any major platform and use nCode to process your addresses from any database(s) that you currently use. The nCode Batch Utility also processes fixed-block flat files on any supported platform.

You can integrate nCode with any software application which is capable of interacting with API’s, callable libraries, or web services. This includes third party applications from major vendors as well as your own in-house applications.

nCode has been successfully integrated with the Siebel CRM application to provide Canadian address correction, verification and alternatives for both Personal (Contact) and Business (Account, Company, Organization, etc.) entities in real time. We have a working integrated solution for Siebel 6.x/2000. Siebel supports Web Services from version 7.5 and up. The best choice for integrating nCode with the latest Siebel web-based architecture is nCode Web Services.

There are a number of benefits that your organization can achieve by implementing an address quality solution powered by nCode. Using nCode allows you to:

• Save time by improving the efficiency of your address capture and management procedures and avoiding wasted effort dealing with the consequences of address errors.
  
  
• Save money by improving the efficiency of your mailings and qualifying for postage discounts from Canada Post.
  
  
• Improve service levels for your customers by ensuring that mailings are not misdirected and that your organization always looks professional by keeping addresses free of subtle errors.

While there are a number of address accuracy products on the market, nCode is the only address quality solution which can meet your needs with a consistent product built from a single code base that operates on every major platform.

Unlike some competing products, nCode is focused entirely on address quality and provides the richest set of functionality that you can use to ensure that your addresses are accurate and formatted according to your needs.

Nova is a very customer-focused company. Our customers tell us that no one offers them better service before, during, or after implementation.

Nova has been a successful provider of address quality solutions since 1995. During this time Nova has grown steadily on the merits of its products and our commitment to customer service which is the best in the industry. As a privately held company, you can be assured that Nova will not become the victim of corporate consolidation as so many public companies have in the past few years. Address quality is Nova’s only business and we are committed to our product line and to our customers.

Nova does not sell its source code. For those customers who desire it, Nova will place its source code in escrow as a measure of insurance against the unlikely event of any cessation of support.

Canada Post supplies new address databases each month. Nova takes each new release and rebuilds our nCode address database with the most up-to-date data available. This database is then made available to our customers for download from our website.

When a new address database is available, all customers are notified via e-mail. You can simply sign on to our secured client site here and download the latest nCode database at your convenience. To install the database, simply move the file into place on the computer(s) where nCode is installed.

Full technical documentation is provided with nCode, including an API function reference and extensive sample tutorial code which is designed to help you understand how to apply nCode in your environment.

Absolutely. Nova’s team of address experts can help you to plan and execute your address quality solution and show you how to get the most from nCode in your organization.

Certainly. Nova would be glad to provide references who can share their experiences with nCode and help you to put nCode to work for you.

Nova understands that our customers must balance the desire for new features with the need for stability and reliability. Program updates for nCode are made when Canada Post mandates changes and when we build new functionality to meet our customers’ needs. These changes are released anywhere from 12 to 18 months apart and are made in such a way as to preserve existing functionality if at all possible.

You can contact Nova to obtain technical support by emailing us anytime at support@novamg.com or by calling (416) 878-0734 during business hours. We will be glad to assist you with any issues you may be having.

Yes. We have a number of partners with software that covers a wide variety of applications. If your application handles Canadian postal addresses then you can use nCode to ensure that your customers have all of the benefits of high address quality.

Nova has partners who resell nCode directly and others who integrate nCode into broader offerings. Nova does not impose market restrictions on its partners. As with any partnership, there are agreement terms that define the rights and responsibilities of each party. We would be glad to discuss these terms with interested organizations.

New products from OEMs need to be SERP certified directly with Canada Post. The process involves ordering a formal test file from Canada Post, processing it and returning the results within three business days. Nova Marketing always provides any needed assistance to our partners in order to ensure that they succeed.

SERP certification is time-limited. In order to remain compliant, you must retest every 18 to 24 months.

Yes. You can be listed as a SERP recognized vendor with your own branded product. Our partnership agreement does however stipulate specific copyright acknowledgements for both Canada Post and Nova Marketing Group Inc.

We can provide you with sample SOA reports and explain the content requirements to you. Alternatively, you may wish to use the SOA reports generated by the nCode Batch Processing Utility.

Yes. Nova Marketing would be pleased to negotiate licensing terms for an application service provider partnership.

We value all of our partners and customers and pride ourselves on giving each of them any technical support that they require. From our experience, our partners typically have more detailed technical questions about the broad functionality of nCode and how to work with nCode on a variety of platforms. Also, our partners often wish to obtain SERP recognition. We therefore often provide assistance and guidance with respect to the SERP process to these organizations.