Address validation in Salesforce – implementation options and considerations

No matter if Salesforce is used only for opportunity tracking or for more advanced functions like marketing automation, traditional mailing, service management or billing, sooner or later having an accurate address database becomes important.

For most organizations customer records are first created in the CRM as leads and opportunities. The sooner they are valid, the lesser the impact of copying invalid data down to other systems like customer care, billing and others.

This post provides information on Salesforce address validation, implementation options and considerations.

How does it work?

Before we dive into details, let’s pause for a while to understand how Salesforce address validation actually works.

The most important thing to remember is that address validation does not take place within Salesforce itself, but rather in an external service. Address databases are huge, specialized and require a lot of software around them and run as cloud-based services with their own computing resources, storage, etc.

This is true for all major validation providers such as Google Maps, USPS, Yahoo, SmartyStreets and others.

Salesforce users do not interact with a validation service directly, but via an add-on (or custom developed code) which integrates with the Salesforce user interface, adds validation buttons and provides out-of-the-box validation for standard Salesforce objects like accounts.

The whole process can be visualized as follows:

Salesforce → Address Validation Add-On → REST or SOAP call → Validation Service

Selecting the right provider and add-on

Knowing how the validation works, making the right choice boils down to answering:

• Which address validation service to use (free vs. commercial, which provider, service plan, etc.)?
• Which add-on to use (a wide selection of commercial and free add-ons is available on Salesforce AppExchange)?
• Is any custom development required? For complex scenarios, it might be better to build custom code (i.e., interfacing directly with the validation service rather than an off-the-shelf add-on).
• What addresses are to be validated: domestic or international?
• What are the addresses used for: shipments, mailing, geocoding?
• Will they be used with map services?
• Is additional information required to be returned for an address such as county, telecom LATA, etc.
• Are there any preferred industry standards?

Popular address validation services

The most popular address validation services are USPS (United States Postal Service), SmartyStreets and Google Maps.

USPS

A good entry-level service, especially if validated addresses are to be used for shipping:

• Optimized for mailing and shipping
• Zip+4 precision
• Free (register and use)
• No international addresses (U.S. and Canada only)
• Somewhat convoluted documentation (https://www.usps.com/business/web-tools-apis/general-api-developer-guide.htm)

SmartyStreets

A robust, commercial service:

• Good documentation (including on-line API testing), supported by multiple Salesforce add-ons
• Full and partial validation
• Zip+4 precision along with a lot of additional information (county, FIPS, geocoding and others)
• Support for bulk validation and autocomplete
• Support for international address validation (requires additional subscription plan)

Google Maps

Address validation is a part of Google Maps Geocoding API. Compared to SmartyStreets or USPS, Google is focused on showing addresses on maps and business advertising.

Other options

QAS or Loqate (formerly PCA Predict/Postcode Anywhere) should be considered international addresses.

Other considerations

Address standardization

It makes sense to implement data standardization before validation.

User entry → Standardization → Validation

In essence, standardization enforces that consistent names are used for various address parts (e.g., US, USA, U.S.A.).

Most address validation tools will standardize an address anyway, however if standardization is enforced up front, there will be fewer validation errors down the line.

Multiple address standardization tools are available on Salesforce AppExchange, for instance this one.

Background validation

While address validation can be done in the background by Salesforce batch jobs, it is often an interactive process. For example:

• Address is incomplete and requires providing missing part, often looking at data outside the CRM such as paperwork
• Address is ambiguous 1300 Main St. which can be 1300 N Main St. or 1300 S Main St.

Since each address validation may have an associated cost, it’s important to come up with a strategy that prevents re-validation of failed addresses without a prior review.

Bulk imports

Legacy data migrated to Salesforce often includes addresses. In such a case, a decision needs to be made whether to validate addresses before or after importing.

We strongly recommend importing pre-validated addresses:

• Data migration usually takes place in multiple iterations, re-validating addresses many times will generate additional cost
• Automated/background validation does not always work (see above) without user intervention

Custom implementations

Occasionally, developing custom integration may be preferable to using off-the-shelf add-ons. Typical reasons for that include:

• Validation of addresses associated to custom objects
• Background bulk validation
• Need for custom user interface components making calls to address validation services

In that case it’s probably worthwhile to start from scratch. Interfacing with validation services is not difficult from the technical standpoint, most development time is usually spent in APEX & Lightning not handling the API calls.

Publicly available sources such as this one for USPS: https://github.com/colemab/SFDC_USPS-Component help get started quickly.

Licensing

Most address validation services require a registration and obtaining an organization id that is later passed to validation service API. From a developer standpoint it is as easy as that, however, always make sure that whatever is done is compliant with service terms & conditions. These are usually published online and update very often, so make sure to read the latest version.

Conclusions

Address validation in Salesforce is relatively simple to implement. Complications lie in business choices not in technical aspects of the implementation. Because of that, at Nextian we do not include location validation in our own products, leaving provider choice up to customers.

Nextian is a vendor of Quote-to-Cash (QTC) software for cloud and communications helping providers accelerate growth and increase customer lifetime value.

Contact us today to find out how we can help you!