Duduping a CRM is like an equation waiting to be solved. Just like a high school math, the more variables you know the values for, the easier the problem is to solve and the more likely you will come up with the correct answer.
CRMs include is a vast number of “Data Markers”. These markers are a literal road map to filling in missing data. For example, if 100% of the emails for a particular company have the email format of Firstname.Lastname@domain.com, then you can probably fill in missing emails for other contacts with confidence. If you have the email domains for contacts, but the account record is lacking a website, that can be filled in too.
A company’s website address is a unique identifier. It is more important than the company name. Look at Peoplesoft as an example: long after the company was acquired by Oracle, you could navigate to www.peoplesoft.com. A few years later, it was totally absorbed…but the website did outlive the company.
Done properly, leveraging data markers within a CRM allows the properly trained consultant to pre-fill data for a more complete picture…BEFORE deduping. In addition the data should be standardized (sometimes called Normalized) before the dedupe process is done.
If you take the correct measures of: (1) data normalization and (2) data fill before deduping, your dedupe process will be greatly improved.