Deduping strategies (loose criteria)

[lfenimore]

Hi everyone!  I've gone through a few passes now to clean up out individual Lead record duplicates.  Now I get into the realm of duplicates occurring because names are misspelled...first and/or last.  Sometimes you can tell just by looking what it should be, and sometimes there is really nothing more to go on.  We'd usually use something like Alumni Finder or a Google search to find that person listed somewhere else.  I'm just curious how other people are cleaning data at this level (without ruining their eyes!) where manual review line by line might be the only option.  Are you splitting out the work to other team members?  Narrowing the criteria to work in smaller batches?  We've only had DT for about 3 months and I've been the primary user, especially with deduping.  Can multiple people work through the same scenarios at the same time or does that cause conflict and record lock-out errors?  Thanks!

[AnthonyValidity]

Hi @lfenimore,

I'm sure our other customers have great ideas for this, but I did want to provide some information that may help.

I would try doing a match criteria, when trying to identify the duplicates, by using the comparison type "First Name" on the First Name field.  This will allow you to match nicknames to full names.  Also, you can try using the Fuzzy Matching and Alpha Clean on both the First Name and Last Name fields.  I wouldn't recommend using the Fuzzy Matching on a first or second pass, but since you're at the end of your deduping it is worth trying.  Fuzzy Matching is an English phoenetic spell check that can catch common errors.  The Alpha Clean algorythm will strip everything but the English letters, numbers, ampersant, and spaces.  This will also allow for you to catch any variations or typos.

Depending if this is feasable for you, you could also remove the First Name field as a criteria and match on lets say Last Name and Email.  I think DOB would be best to use if you have it.

I do not have much to offer as for data enrichment or correction, but maybe our other customers have feedback for this.  

Multiple users should have no issue working in DemandTools v5.xx in the same scenario, though if more than one user process the same batch of records there is a potential to get locked out.  But multiple users can run the scenario up to the preview screen and should not run into any issues.

Hope this helps!