When a bespoke document is utilised as a response mechanism for a particular application, alternative data capture processes can often be utilised. Generally, the structuring of the form allows for greater accuracy and efficiency, and an intuitive and experienced approach can realise genuine cost and quality benefits.

	Direct Mail Response cards
	Customer Loyalty Cards
	Applications Direct Debit Mandates

ndata has processed literally hundreds of millions of forms across all industry sectors and this gives us the unique ability to adapt quickly and effectively, either to assist in the design or to tune our systems to your current forms.

Case study:Linking fishermen to the bank

Responsibilities of The Environment Agency include administration of fishing rod licenses, and permits to dispose of effluent. In order to increase the efficiency and reduce costs of collecting revenue from this activity, The Agency offered its clients the opportunity to pay by direct debit. Because of the banking implications, confidentiality and very high accuracy levels were paramount.

The Agency selected ndata as the best service provider to develop a method to process direct debit forms on The Agency’s behalf.

A PO box was set up to receive direct debit mandates direct to our premises and these were opened and white mail extracted and returned to The Agency. All documents were then scanned and the unique reference number was read automatically from each image to allow access to the database of all 700,000 prospects that The Agency had mailed and provided ndata with. Any address changes were updated using PAF (Postal Address File) to correctly format addresses, and handwritten bank account information was keyed manually using specialised bank account validation software to ensure accuracy. OCR software was used to extract other information from the images including license type and amount. Fully processed and validated data files were passed to The Agency on a daily basis in a specification as required by BACS.

Images, together with associated index files were provided to The Agency on a simple to use EDM system, much simplifying the implementation of direct debit payment method and allowing for instant viewing when required. Over 100,000 mandates were processed.