0208 915 1103|sales@thesoftwarebureau.com

About Martin

Martin Rides has 35 years’ experience in the world of Data & Direct Mail. He has worked across many areas of the industry including agencies, mail production and data bureaux. After 9 years running a specialist Direct Mail consulting practice, Martin returned to The Software Bureau as Managing Director in 2015.

27001 but not just any 27001

By |2019-02-12T16:19:40+00:00February 12th, 2019|

The Software Bureau is pleased to announce the achievement of 27001:2013 certification. The globally recognised standard of information security. The specialist inspection, audit and certification firm SGS were chosen to conduct the certification process due to their reputation for providing the most thorough and stringent audit process which far exceed the minimum requirements for certification. SGS is one of a small number of assessors accredited by the sole national accreditation body United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS). Being accredited by UKAS demonstrates SGS’s commitment to hold organisations such as The Software Bureau to not only the minimum UK standards, but to internationally agreed standards too. Clients can take confidence in The Software Bureau’s 27001 credentials are industry leading. “Information security has [...]

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Partially Addressed Mail: The Secret Source of Responsive Acquisition Data

By |2019-01-15T09:58:03+00:00January 15th, 2019|

As we all know, last year GDPR made it illegal for marketers to contact cold prospects where legitimate consent could not be proven. Brands who previously relied upon sending mail to bought-in lists in order to acquire customers were forced to dramatically rethink their marketing strategy. Some reverted to untargeted, less responsive door drops, others redirected their marketing spend to other communication channels entirely for fear of prosecution by the ICO. However on October 5th 2018 Royal Mail sent a letter to customers titled Trial of a new advertising mail service: Royal Mail Partially Addressed Mail™. The letter introduces Partially Addressed Mail as a new way to identify and communicate with prospects. The product promises 165x greater targeting than door [...]

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6 New Automation Focused Products from The Software Bureau

By |2018-11-06T10:37:26+00:00August 28th, 2018|

The quest to achieve greater efficiencies, cost reductions and removal of compliance vulnerabilities has led data professionals to look for ways to automate their data systems. Modern mail producers, data bureaux and in-house data teams now see fast processing speeds and breadth of functionality as the standard and are turning their attention towards ways to reduce human interaction altogether and opportunities to achieve ‘lights out’ data processing and cleansing. The Software Bureau is adapting to meet these demands and today has unveiled a host of new automation focused products under the ‘Swift’ banner. These new software products make it easy for data teams to automatically process, sort and clean data without manual intervention.   Why Automate Data Processing and Cleansing? [...]

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MyMailing.co.uk – Now Supports Mailmark

By |2018-11-06T10:38:45+00:00April 17th, 2018|

The Software Bureau announced the upgrade of it’s free to use online sortation service MyMailing.co.uk. The improved service now allows printing companies, mailing houses and corporate mailing departments to achieve the largest postage discounts by sorting data to the Mailmark standard which now accounts for close to 2 billion mailed items per year. Mailmark sorts are priced on a pay as you go, nil commitment basis with all other Royal Mail sorts offered free of charge. MyMailing.co.uk helps organisations dramatically cut the cost of postage by sorting address data into Royal Mail compliant sequences and batches. Royal Mail incentivise users of direct mail with significant cost savings for complying with Royal Mail sortation requirements. To achieve these savings traditionally requires [...]

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New Recruits at The Software Bureau

By |2018-11-06T10:38:54+00:00January 16th, 2018|

New Starters from Left Lucie Marinaro-Jones and Jolly Varshney The Software Bureau welcomes two new experienced team members to its growing team. As part of an ongoing expansion, The Software Bureau has recruited two new team members. Lucie Marinaro-Jones joins as Account Director and Jolly Varshney joins the C# development team. Lucie has spent more than 10 years working for global data businesses such as Experian and Equifax where she managed customer relationships with top tier brands such as Burberry and BBC. Lucie joins the growing commercial team and will be responsible for the strategic relationships between The Software Bureau and their diverse and expanding client base. Jolly is an experienced .Net developer who has held senior development positions across [...]

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3 Mailmark Updates

By |2018-11-06T10:39:04+00:00January 3rd, 2018|

It has been almost 4 years since the official launch of Mailmark, Royal Mail’s overhauled bulk mail service offering improved tracking and increasingly significant postage cost savings. The Software Bureau has been involved in Mailmark from its very inception, invited by Royal Mail to participate in pre-launch steering groups to help define its implementation, building Mailmark eManifest management software and writing the first of it’s kind guide to Mailmark implementation. Fast-forward to January 2018 and the Customer Bar Code (CBC) mailings, once the most popular mailing service, has now been phased out in favour of Mailmark. Close to 90% of all bulk mail sent in the UK is now Mailmark enabled. As the use of Mailmark has climbed so has [...]

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5 Ways Cygnus can Help with GDPR

By |2018-11-06T10:39:16+00:00December 13th, 2017|

As 2017 ebbs away and the countdown to May 2018 and GDPR enforcement creeps closer we thought we would share just some of the ways Cygnus can be used to meet GDPR requirements. Here are 5 ways Cygnus users can demonstrate GDPR credentials to data controllers.   1. Help Data Controllers Implement Information Audit Outcomes Many months ago The ICO published Preparing for GDPR – 12 steps to take now. This guide is a commonly used reference guide to achieving GDPR compliance. After the obvious first step ‘make people aware of GDPR’ the second recommendation is to conduct a data audit. You should document what personal data you hold, where it came from and who you share it with. You [...]

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5 New Cygnus Customers in 5 Weeks

By |2018-11-06T10:39:26+00:00December 5th, 2017|

“When we were looking for a solution Cygnus and The Software Bureau came up again and again.” Andrew Wells of Media Five joins 4 other clients in the last 5 weeks who have chosen Cygnus data processing software from The Software Bureau. 2017 has seen significant growth from existing clients expanding their use of Cygnus and new clients choosing the data processing software. With these 5 new additions to the Cygnus user base, the pace of investment in data processing doesn’t seem to be slowing down. We asked some of our newest users to tell us what swayed them to choose Cygnus.   GDPR Compliance The General Data Protection Regulation comes into force in May 2018 and for the first [...]

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Introducing SwiftCore – Cloud Data Processing

By |2018-11-06T10:39:44+00:00December 1st, 2017|

“What if we could take everything our Cygnus clients love about Embedded Suppression. All the files in one place, control over the sequence of matches, no negotiations with individual file owners. And make it all available to developers in the cloud?” It’s November 2016 and the product team at The Software Bureau are meeting to discuss the roadmap for Swift and Cygnus. An unprecedented silence falls upon the room while everyone reflects on Andy Benson’s challenge. Seconds later and the room has erupted into a frenzy of noise and excitement. Developers are frantically drawing system diagrams on the white board and talking about Azure Cloud, Serverless tech, Planet Scale processing, data chunking and NoSQL databases. The commercial team are contemplating [...]

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A Practical Guide to GDPR Compliance for Processors

By |2018-12-18T15:57:59+00:00October 18th, 2017|

If your business takes possession of personal information such as a list of named individuals to be mailed or cleansed, then chances are you will need to make changes to your business to become compliant with GDPR. Organisations who collect, store and ‘own’ data are classified as data controllers, whereas organisations who take custody and use the data for example to print and send a direct mail campaign are classified as data processors. As of May 2018 data processors such as mailing houses, printers and data bureaux will be subject to many of the same new legal obligations enforced upon data controllers. Failing to adequately prepare your business for GDPR increases the risk of fines, but will also likely cost [...]

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