Obama & SQL Power focus on
Reducing Waste & Saving the Environment

November 15, 2008 - The environment and clean coal technology were huge talking points in the latest US election. But as President-elect Barack Obama has said, there is not a single approach to improving air quality, solving the energy crisis or reducing global warming. Many processes need to be tackled and revised in order to provide us all with a healthy and sustainable environment.

Every year, Billions of Dollars are wasted by organizations around the world on redundant or undeliverable direct mailers. Each year, catalog retailers mail out more than 20 billion catalogs(1) in the United States alone, or 67 catalogs for every man, woman and child. According to a study, the junk mail industry mailed out 392 solicitations per person in the US in 2005(1).

Due to the poor quality of retailers' customer databases, some addresses receive multiple copies of the same catalog while others never receive any. This results in a large percentage of direct mailing costs being utterly wasted by companies.

By reducing the unnecessary junk mail caused by duplicate and invalid records in organizations' customer databases, companies can recover a large chunk of their Marketing budget and channel it towards more effective Marketing initiatives.

Software capable of correcting these types of data quality problems has been available for years, but until now it has typically cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, putting it out of the reach for most small and medium-sized organizations.

The situation changed earlier this year, when Canadian Consulting firm SQL Power Group announced the general availability of the SQL Power MatchMaker: a free Data Cleansing software tool that cleans customers' databases, including address correction and duplicate data removal. Now companies that were hesitant to invest in data cleansing solutions can cleanse and streamline their massive customer databases at little or no cost.

"By releasing this software for free, we are reducing the barriers to address correction and data de-duplication," says Jonathan Fuerth, head of software development at SQL Power (and closet environmentalist). "Now small and medium-size businesses have no excuse for mailing out multiple copies of catalogs and direct mailings to the same household... or worse yet, mailing out catalogs to invalid addresses only to have them returned weeks later. Our software is easy to learn, easy to use, and free. With a modest investment of effort, businesses can save money and trees, plus reduce pollution in rivers and lakes. Every little bit counts."

If software like the SQL Power MatchMaker could reduce just half a percent of catalog mailouts, that would add up to 40,000 tons of trees(1) saved from needless use each year.

From this perspective, the SQL Power MatchMaker is a win-win for businesses: the cleansed data reduces costs, provides better decision-making information for the company, and the reduced duplication and improved data quality helps the environment by using fewer resources for incorrect printing and mailing.

Individuals and companies can download SQL Power's popular data cleansing tool - the SQL Power MatchMaker for free at http://www.sqlpower.ca/page/MatchMaker

¹http://www.forestethics.org/downloads/forestethicsCC1.pdf