Resolving Variations in Data - IE: Address Grouping

[clarkmc07]

Hello,
I’m working with a shipment data set and am looking for a solution to group slight variations in the data. For example, company name may vary between shipments, (ABC Co. vs. A.B.C. Company) or an address is entered with an inconsistent abbreviation (St. vs Street). I'm trying to resolve this once so that when new shipment data is appended it automatically resolves the variations. Sample data shows below - this currently shows as 3 shipments to 3 different companies when in the end it should show 3 shipments to 1 single company. Any input would be appreciated!

Sender Company Name	Sender Address 1	Sender Address 2	City	State	Zip
ABC Co.	123 Avery Lane		Milwaukee	WI	53252
A.B.C. Company	123 Avery Lane		Milwaukee	WI	53252
ABC Co	123 Avery Ln		Milwaukee	WI	53252

[Anonymous]

Where is your data source?  Say for from SQL server, you can write a stored procedure to pre-process this kind of data.  Or when you can click home -> edit queries -> Add Columns -> Column From Examples to conduct the conversion such as Ln to Lane and Co. to Company.  Depends on the complexity of the conversion, you can need to add multiple columns to get what you want.

Hope it helps.

Eric Ji | Senior Business Intelligence Consultant
www.designmind.com