32 Scope of Standardization

321 Benefits

The Business Address Standards are being adopted by postal units and are required in all internal Postal Service processing systems — including the NCOA System and ACS. Postal Service licensees, direct marketing service bureaus, and business–to–business mailers are encouraged to incorporate these standards as a means to achieve improved merge/purge results, higher list quality, and Postal Service deliverability.

There are additional benefits to be achieved through improved business–to–business address quality and a standardized address format, such as increasing potential deliverability of mail once processed and more consistency in address information stored in customer files and directories. The emphasis has been to clarify business–to–business addressing techniques and provide guidelines and tools that deal with the many unusual addressing conventions in business–to–business list processing. A strong focus has been on providing the Postal Service with a uniform approach to matching these addresses through its customer products and automated equipment.