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CRM 2007: Different use-cases for merging duplicate Account Records

Arno-Meyer
Employee
Employee
‎09-11-2008 1:28 AM
Incomplete, inconsistent and redundant Account Records in CRM are not only annoying – it causes issues and costs in all Processes.
With bad Data Quality it is difficult e. g. for Campaigns to select and to target customers. Response-Rates will suffer here as well and with bad Data Quality you will also have problems with your analytics. Probably you will even misinterpret the results and take the wrong actions. However in CRM it is really hard to achieve good data quality. There are many reasons for this:
  • Mergers and Acquisitions stir the database and causes duplicate records
  • Data entry from various sources like self-registration in a web-shop, Partner Management, External List Management, etc.
  • Data entry in various systems and replication in other systems
  • Entry of incomplete data in CRM due to pressure of time or information hiding by the responsible Sales Rep.
  • Only parts of Address- or Communication-Data are known or available 
This problem can’t be solved just by forcing the user to enter all data. It is very important to keep the hurdles for Data-Entry low as the use of CRM is more flexible as most of the other Business Applications. 
In CRM there are several options to remove/prevent duplicate Account records

1) Duplicate Check

If a Duplicate Check is activated the customer can prevent the entry of new Accounts which are very similar to existing Accounts. The Duplicate Check is not only working if you create a new Account, it also displays a list of potential Duplicate Records if you edit an existing Account. In this case it makes sense to create a Cleansing Case to merge the duplicate Accounts.
Illustration 1: Duplicate Popup

2) Cleansing Cases

Cleansing Cases can get created out of the Duplicate Popup or just from the Account Search Result List.
Within a Cleansing Case two or more Accounts can be merged to one remaining Master Account. Within CRM there is a Detail-Page to do a comparison between the involved Accounts. Here the User
  • can define a Master-Account
  • remove single Accounts from the Cleansing Case
  • decide which data from the Non-Master-Accounts should get transferred to the Master-Account
  • start/schedule the Merge process
The system automatically transfers all transactional data like Activities, Opportunities, etc. In addition the Non-Master Accounts will get flagged for archiving and a relationship will get established ('Replaced by … '/ 'Replaces …').

Illustration 2: Cleansing Case Detail-Screen

Additional Information related to Data Cleansing:
Note 1090391 - FAQ : Business Partner Data Cleansing

3) Data Quality Management

The Data Quality Management (DQM) framework provides a set of powerful tasks designed to eliminate duplicate data records and ensure a consistently high standard of data quality
Data Quality Management provides the following types of validation:
  • Integrated Duplicate Check as a technically integrated solution, including duplicate identification and duplicate merge, using SAP software or a third-party add-on.
  • External Duplicate Check by a service provider (agency), including export of data records, upload of results, and post-processing of results (merge).
  • External Postal Address Validation (syntax validation) using an external service provider, with export of data records and upload of results.
  • External Content Validation for relocation using a service provider (agency), with export of data records and upload of results.
For DQM not only single records but whole Target Groups or Marketing Profiles with many Business Partner Records are used.

Illustration 3: Structure of Data Quality Management

The reason to offer DQM is the fact that the manual processing of Cleansing Cases requires some knowledge about the Account requires also some time. If a Company gets new redundant Account-Data day in, day out an automated process to handle numerous Accounts is required.
In addition DQM allows the engagement external agencies to validate and de-duplicate Account Data. It’s also possible to schedule DQM-Tasks as periodical jobs.
With DQM Customers have the option to create own Task-Variants and assign Steps to this Variant. For all Steps different Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be used to monitor the results of the related Step. In addition every Step has its own Job-Monitor and an Application-Log.
Illustration 4: The process of different DQM Task-Types

For all Tasks where external agencies are engaged a file with Account Data will be exported and a validated file again imported. The content of the file is determined automatically based the underlying structure RMT_BUPA_DQM_COMPLEX_STRUC, and can consist of any of the fields contained within this structure. These are the central business partner fields, addresses, and communication data.
For sure it’s the best choice to sensitize Users to take care for data quality and to prevent duplicate account records whenever this is possible. However, CRM offers different options to eliminate duplicate records and to improve Data Quality.
An integrated Duplicate Check helps to prevent the entry of duplicate Accounts and to identify existing duplicates.
The creation of Cleansing Cases allows to merge different Accounts and to transfer data from Non-Master Account to the Master Record.
Whenever the manually processing of Cleansing Cases is too time-consuming it makes sense to use Data Quality Management to have an automated process for this. Here the customer has still the option to do integrated Tasks for De-Duplication or to authorize a specialized agency to improve/ensure Data Quality.

Additional Information related to Data Quality Management:
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