Uniserv supports Unicode in the SAP environment to ensure address data quality
Pforzheim, June 2003 With the globalization of business activities, many different languages must be used in a single system. That, in turn, means using the charsets of multiple languages including their own special characters. The consequence is a veritable alphabet soup. In direct marketing this can be particularly frustrating: address information may be displayed so cryptically that it is anybody's guess who the adressee might be.
The solution to this problem is called Unicode. Unicode unifies the different character sets by assigning a unique number to each character - no matter which system, program or language is used. In doing so, Unicode utilizes a 16-bit code that can represent over 65,000 characters. By comparison, the generally used standard ISO 8859-1 (Latin 1) with its 8-bit code only covers 256 characters.
In the SAP environment, for example, SAP R/3 and mySAP CRM can be set up at installation as either a Unicode or a non-Unicode system. In the case of a Unicode system, the SAP database is converted to Unicode, which provides clean output especially when handling different character sets. The Uniserv solutions with SAP-certified integration post for mySAP.com™ (postal address validation) and mail for mySAP.com™ (duplicate check and error-tolerant search) are executable both in the Unicode and the non-Unicode environment. In the respective SAP system the two solutions sustain the integrity and consistency of the managed address information.
The responsible entity for Unicode is the Unicode Consortium, a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard, which specifies the representation of text data in modern software products and standards. http://www.unicode.org/.
With 3,000 server installations and more than 12 million euros in revenues, Uniserv is the foremost provider in Germany of software solutions for all aspects of professional address management. The software house, which is located in Pforzheim, is among the leading companies in Europe offering international address management solutions. With a staff of more than 90 employees at the Pforzheim location and independent partners in the most important European countries and in the US, Uniserv offers a whole spectrum of products to ensure address data quality for address management applications such as CRM, e-business, data warehousing, call center, ERP projects or database marketing. The solutions are sector neutral and are available for all generally used IT platforms (mainframe, UNIX, iSeries (AS/400), Windows NT/2000/XP) as well as for SAP and Oracle. Most of the solutions can be utilized internationally.
