Top causes of duplicate records

Duplicate records in your customer data field results in duplicate campaigning. Duplicate customer records in your marketing database results in bad customer experience, and reduce marketing efficiency. Moreover, duplicate records in CRM system can distort the projections, results in reduced of your heavy investment

Common causes of duplicate records include:

Poor data-entry procedures
Inconsistent data entry, inadequate verification, poor data entry service level agreements can make way for duplicate records in your customer file. Four out of ten SMBs surveyed, reported that the root flow of duplicate business records are through poor data-input procedure.

Inconsistent formatting & abbreviations
Even if checked, a differently formatted name may not be found or recognized as a duplicate. Eg: "Doctor William Godwin" may not be recognized if he also exists as "Dr William Godwin".

Change of addresses
The same person may appear to not exist in the database if they have since changed their address.

Poor data integration
Different systems, or different data format used in various system can result in duplicate entries in an organization. Inconsistent data integrity rules within systems like mainframe applications, CRM applications, flat files, spreadsheets and smaller databases like MS Access used by departments can spawn duplicate version of the same customer.

Poor data validation
Poor modeling techniques and the failure to impose business rules to catch data input errors can let unscrupulous or duplicate data in your system.

For example, when City, State and ZipCode fields are not validated – then it can result in many duplicate records.

List Merging
Data merged from multiple data set and made into one super-set can result in different version of the same record. In spite of all the procedures, checks and validations, data merging process continue to plague the new data with multiple data variants.

Company merging and acquisitions

When data from two organizations are merged, the new data can hold two versions of the same customer record. Heterogeneous processes and systems used by SMBs to maintain customer records can funnel in new avatar of the same customer.

Prospect list purchases
List purchased or imported from third party vendors can bring in fresh set of prospect data. But, along with the new wealth, it can also bring in duplicate records of customers that existing in your system.

Systems Integration

Often multiple systems need to talk with each other – for example, perhaps your Financials system needs to talk to your Ordering and Quoting system which in turn needs to talk to your Customer Relationship Management system.

In-flow from multiple customer channel

Customer details entered through different channels (web site telephone, phone etc.) can result in different account of the same customer.

One world - one view of the customer

Single, comprehensive view of your customers is the key for maximizing customer relationship and induce higher performance from customer relationship management.