As you deal with an increasing amount of data, you will invariably be faced with the challenge of keeping it free of duplicates. Whilst this issue exists across all databases, I am referring to Zoho CRM for the purposes of this article.
Like most CRMs, Zoho has built-in deduplication functionality, which is easy to use and can be applied across data in the Leads, Contacts and Accounts module. Each module will give you a choice of 4 fields (you can select up to 3), based on which, the system will find and merge duplicates. Zoho will either auto-merge records if all values are the same, or it will prompt you to resolve conflicts where values of duplicate records are found to be different.
Now, a great way to limit the potential for duplicate records (being proactive here!) is to set up what are called ‘Unique’ fields in Zoho. Once a field is marked as Unique, Zoho will prompt you if it finds a duplicate value, whenever you try to enter a new record. Great stuff right, but choose with care as you are allowed a maximum of two Unique fields! Typically, this might be the Email Address and Mobile, however, you can also choose other fields specific to your system like perhaps Passport Number, or Company Registration Number, if you hold that kind of data.
At this stage you might think, wow, you will never need to deduplicate, but before you jump for joy, let me bring you back to earth with a gentle limitation of this feature. Remember, there are different ways to create records and without going into too much detail, there are scenarios where the deduplication fails. One example being the aforementioned Email Address, which although set up as Unique, will not stop duplicate records from being created, if they come in via Zoho Sheet View, are restored from the recycle bin, form part of a data migration or imported through synchronisation with Outlook or Google.
I think it is quite clear that duplicates are an inevitable, ongoing housekeeping task in any database. CRM platforms like Zoho provide useful deduplication features, but can they provide fuzzy logic instead of exact matches? In fact there are a few reasons why you might need our deduplication solution, which is available as an extension to Zoho CRM and many other platforms:
The Reasons:
1) Quality of Duplicates – This is the single most important reason. CRMs usually find duplicates as exact matches. Our DeDupe is built on algorithms which have been trained through studying and processing tens of millions of records. For example, it knows that (a) Bangalore = Bengaluru, (b) NSW = N S W = N.S.W. (c) Mohd. Iqbal = Mohammad Iqbal = Mhd Iqbal = Iqbal, Md. (d) Seven Industrial Parkway = 7 indl pkwy and hundreds of more sophisticated examples. This quality drives the organization towards achieving much higher levels of data integrity.
2) Duplicate Parameters – Zoho CRM gives an exact match for 3-4 parameters like Name, Mobile etc. Our DeDupe currently covers 9 parameters and more will be added in coming weeks. And all the parameters show smart pattern recognition as described in #1 above. This enables you to look at the data in multiple ways and triangulate easily on similar records which have been represented multiple times in the system, thus contaminating the database.
3) Ease of Discovery – Very intuitive interface which analyses and merges similar clusters, as compared to a batch report of exact duplicates rendered by CRMs. The information of similar records gets frequently updated automatically and there is no need for you to periodically run any reports. Consequently, correcting the data becomes a regular habit rather than a one-off spring cleaning exercise.
