Postal services nationally and internationally collect data about the services they offer. The purpose of data collection is to assure efficient, reliable and good-quality service at affordable prices for citizens and organisations. Data collection provides insights into the types of postal services accessed by individuals and organisations, the cost, the quality of service and the impact of advancing technologies.

Analysis and evaluation of recent data shows:

the number of letter-post items sent per capita is declining

the number of parcel and package deliveries is increasing a high rate of on-time delivery of priority letters in capital cities

the number of households that request redirection of mail from one address to another is decreasing

the share of national employment in postal services is decreasing.

The maintenance of quality data requires an organisation to hold accurate addresses to ensure that communications, letters and parcel deliveries are delivered to the right address. Organisations can access the big data collected by national postal services to update their own address database. The outcome is improved organisational efficiency by reducing the costs of administration, lessening return-to-sender mail, and lowering the costs of mail delivery. Movements of households can also help organisations to identify areas of population growth and decline.

Any organisation can purchase the National Change of Address database from its national postal service. National Change of Address data are drawn from Mail Redirection services that record households that move residence. An organisation that purchases the database is able to match its customer database to the National Change of Address database to update its addresses and delete any that are out of date. Organisations are able to check the attributes and real-time nature of any big data they purchase by verifying it has the five Vs characteristic of big data.

Questions

How does accessing big data from the National Change of Address database improve an organisation's efficiency?

How does big data gathered by postal services help businesses connect with their customers and find potential new customers?

What sort of trends can postal data enable researchers to identify?

Identify the five Vs of big data, and explain why an organisation should verify that any big data they purchase has these characteristics.