Following new EU regulations, the media company Rheinische Post (RP) is realising a solution for the legally compliant validation of telephone numbers in a joint project with COCUS. Over 220,000 validations have already been successfully carried out for communication with interested customers and subscribers since the project was completed.
RP implements data protection-compliant automated validation of telephone numbers
Rheinische Post is the highest-circulation daily newspaper in the Rhineland and is based in Düsseldorf. The media group reaches around 760,000 readers per RP circulation every day and achieves a cross-media brand reach of 1.8 million readers per day. As one of the highest-reach portals of German daily newspapers, the Rheinische Post online portal also reaches around 7.95 million unique users per month.
The purpose of the joint project with COCUS in telemarketing is to ensure anonymised, data protection-compliant communication with interested readers and subscribers within validations. Due to the high expected volume of over 280,000 telephone numbers that need to be validated each year, Rheinische Post is introducing an automated validation process.
The meaning of validation and the process of validating telephone numbers
In general, phone number validation is particularly important in applications such as online forms, customer databases and communication systems to ensure that the phone numbers collected are usable. The process of validating phone numbers involves checking whether a phone number is correct and reachable.
COCUS supports the local partner as an IT service provider headquartered in Düsseldorf with the implementation of a validation service for mobile and landline numbers via SMS and outbound calls. The project includes support from decision-making with a quick project start, intensive support during the implementation process and operation and support for validation.
Selection of AWS as a stable, compliant solution architecture
During the first project phase, COCUS supported Rheinische Post in choosing the right solution architecture. Various functions as well as the advantages and disadvantages of individual services were jointly evaluated before the project was implemented.
The AWS service proved to be the most suitable solution compared to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), so that AWS was selected as a stable, legally compliant solution architecture. The decisive factor was the available and reliable functions of the Amazon Connect service in the EU central region.
Amazon Connect offers the option of configuring an automatic speech-to-text function for the intended outbound calls as well as interaction with other services. The further integrated components within the solution architecture enable SMS dispatch via serverless functions and a managed NoSQL database.
Cost-efficient validation of over 280,000 telephone numbers annually
As a result, the implemented solution is completely serverless with on-demand resources and a pay-per-use approach. Accordingly, the cost-effective and at the same time stable, legally compliant telephone number validation is a long-term benefit for RP. Since the end of the project, 220,000 telephone numbers have already been successfully validated without any outages.
The implementation was completed with a high level of satisfaction based on a fast and flexible reaction during the development process. The automated service will continue to support Rheinische Post with over 23,000 monthly and 280,000 annual enquiries in the future in addition to COCUS’ further operational and support services.
