BBS in a Box 2/BBS in a box - Trilogy II.iso/Files/Mag/T-Z/ZP4 w⁄ Illustrat Folder/ZP4 Article

Text File | 1993-12-11 | 9.2 KB | 180 lines | [TEXT/MSWD]

ZP4 CD–ROM    by Joe Tvedt

Published by:    Semaphore Corporation
        207 Granada Drive
        Aptos, CA 95003-5007
        408-688-9200    FAX [phone]


    If I remember my history correctly, the US Post Office was
founded in colonial days by Benjamin Franklin.
At that time, it was probably enough to send mail addressed to the
name of the addressee together with the city and
colony of residence. It has gotten a lot more complicated since then.
Along the way to the current addressing
method, we saw the addition of postal "zones" within cities, then the
creation of the 5–digit "zip" codes, then the
9–digit zip codes, and most recently the creation of the 11–digit
"delivery point" bar codes. According to Mike at
Semaphore Corporation, in 1992 there were over 120 million
mailable addresses in the United States and about 1
million address changes per month.

    As the complexity of mail delivery has increased, so have the
costs of mailing. The Postal Service, however,
will give a substantial break on mailing costs if addresses are
corrected and standardized according to CASS
[Coding Accuracy Support System]. A third–class mailing from a list
that is "CASS certified" can bring the cost
per piece as low as 13.1¢ for the first ounce; a non–profit mailing
from a CASS certified list brings the cost down
to 8.1¢ per one–ounce piece. To receive CASS certification, coding
software must pass stringent Postal Service
testing to assure its ability to output addresses in machine–readable
formats with accuracy. The ZP4 database does
have CASS certification and mailings prepared with it qualify for the
lowest postal rates available. The whole
point of the ZP4 CD–ROM is to process a mailing list according to CASS
specifications and allow a mailer to take
advantage of these lower costs. According to Semaphore, there are 29
million addresses in the ZP4 database. It is
important to understand that ZP4 is not a mail–list manager and it
cannot print labels with bar codes. The authors
of ZP4 leave those tasks to other software already available.

    There is a price to be paid to get the benefits of the lowest
mailing rates in terms of both computer equipment
and a subscription to CASS–certified software. The mass of data is so
huge that it is distributed on a CD–ROM.
The "Get Info" boxes for the ZP4 application show a modest 216K; the
data, on the other hand, is stored in a
compressed form and still occupies over 427 megabytes (Figure 1).
To use ZP4, you'll need not only a CD–ROM
drive on your system but also a $500 per year subscription to the
quarterly CD's. The Postal Service requires its
licensees to limit the use of the Zip+4 data to a single quarter. After a
particular CD's expiration, it will refuse to
launch. You can always get around this limitation by resetting the
clock on the Mac, but this means that you'll be
working with inaccurate data. You also won't be allowed the benefits
of the low rates since the postal form (Form
3553) that must be submitted with the mailing to show that it is
CASS certified will show that the list was
processed with expired data.

    When ZP4 is launched, four windows open (Figure 2). These
windows allow you to find a particular address
in the database by stepping through states, cities, streets and specific
addresses on the selected street. The example
shown is the address of the AMUG Resource Center, 4131 North 24th
Street, Suite A–120, Phoenix, AZ. It
shows that the correct Zip+4 address for the Resource Center is
85016–6263 as it is for all the suites from A–100
through A–199. The "CRT" column is carrier route which is another
standard by which bulk mail can be pre–
sorted for cost benefits. Two other windows are available if needed.
The streets index window shows all the
occurrences of a particular street name anywhere in the database,
and the companies index shows the complete
addresses for any company or organization that appears in the Postal
Service database. If a mailer were required to
look up each address in a list by stepping through these windows for
each address, the job would be so daunting
that few would find the effort justified for a list of any size. ZP4 is
able to take care of this part of the job if an
existing list can be output in a simple tab–delimited text file as most
databases can. Once an existing mailing list is
put into this form, ZP4 processes it in batch mode. Each street
address is "parsed" or broken into the four
elements defined by the Postal Service, the correct spelling of the
city is checked, the correct state or territory is
matched to the database and the correct Zip+4 code is retrieved for
that address. ZP4 then writes the data out to a
new file. The new file may contain both the original data and the
corrected data to allow verification before
overwriting of the original data. It may also contain an error code to
allow ZP4 to specify why a particular address
could not be coded. It is the user's job to then re–import the coded
data back into the mail–list manager or other
application for the production of labels and bar codes.

    If you're running System 7, ZP4 allows a programmer
conversant with Apple's "high level events built into
System 7" to write a custom application for data entry so that every
address entered is processed by ZP4. As an
example, see Figure 3. This shows the entry of a simple street
address in Phoenix before it is processed by ZP4.
It is not in CASS format since both the street direction and the street
label are spelled out and it doesn't qualify for
inclusion in the lowest rate class since only a 5–digit zip code is
present. Figure 4 shows the same address after
processing by ZP4; the correct abbreviations are used, the 9–digit zip
code is present, and the carrier route has
been added. A demonstration application called "clean–by–event" is
provided on the CD for those with the talents
to take advantage of this feature. I don't claim any programming
talents so I have not attempted its use. The
documentation differentiates between System 7 or the MultiFinder
and the Finder, so it appears that System 7 is
not required to run ZP4, but there is no indication of the minimum
system requirements or minimum memory. All
of my testing was done on a 8–meg Mac II running System 7.0 and
System TuneUp 1.1.1.

    For the benefit of those maintaining huge mailing lists, the
license with ZP4 is uniquely suitable. The license
allows the use of multiple copies of the ZP4 application, as in a
networked setting, as long as only one copy of the
ZP4 data is in use. The documentation suggests several ways to speed
up ZP4, including copying both the
application and the data to a suitably large hard disk. It would be a
violation of this very reasonable use license to
make multiple copies of the data, but the permission to make
multiple copies of the application allows a user to
distribute the list maintenance task.

    Help is available from the "About" box. When called, it appears
in an indexed form from which you may
choose the topic. The entire help file can also be printed out; it runs
26 pages and offers not only suggestions
about ZP4 but also background information on Postal Service mailing
requirements. The one call I made to
Semaphore was promptly answered, though not toll–free, and the
questions I had were quickly and pleasantly
answered. I was also given some of the background information
about the size of the task of maintaining the data.

    Having assisted a non–profit corporation with the preparation
of a mailing, I was already acquainted with
some of the benefits of bulk mailing. It is far from a trivial job, but
the benefits to the mailer are substantial; if we
had had the use of ZP4, the costs would have been even less with a
minimum of additional work. After
experimenting with ZP4, I found the documentation clear and
concise. The application functioned as expected and
pointed out errors in the test data I used. I tried an experiment with
a small amount of data from my personal
address list. I took the addresses of 15 friends and acquaintances
and put them into a test list. I then processed the
list with ZP4. I mailed two copies of the same letter to each recipient.
One copy had only 5–digit zip codes while
the other had 9–digit zip codes and bar codes on each envelope. I
enclosed a post card so the recipients could let
me know whether there was any difference in the speed of delivery.
Some of the addresses were here in the Valley
while others were spread across the US. This small list was processed
in a few moments. (Semaphore's
documentation indicates speeds from 2,500 records per hour on an
8MHz MacPlus to 30,000 records per hour on
a faster Mac.) I was amazed when each recipient replied that the two
letters had arrived on the same day. This
indicates that  the benefits of Zip+4 coding and bar coding lie in
reduced postal rates and not, as I had expected, in
the speed of delivery. It is easy to use and the savings available are
quite substantial. Anyone who has a mailing
list in any database that can do the required exporting and
importing, or anyone who needs to create a mailing that
can benefit from the reduced costs of CASS certification will find the
benefits available in ZP4 well worth the
minimal effort to use it.