De-Duplication - Solution approach
To meet the de-duplication challenge outlined first requires a decision as to whether the solution lies in the provision of technologies and skills (RADIUS) so the task can be undertaken in house, or having the work undertaken on a bureau basis. There are pros and cons for both but whichever route is chosen, the same methodologies and software would be used.
Step
one is to define the objectives and the likely process steps. At Tech4T we tend
to use Mind Manager for this task.
Next, sample data needs to be extracted from the sales lead system - contact, address and related information - in order that sufficient procedures and appropriate match keys can be developed and tested.
Also the data needs to be examined for erroneous characters, any formatting issues and for the team undertaking the work to really understand the content of the files, layout, relationships between tables and what the data means in terms of sales, marketing and business benefit. In addition, given there will be a need to output the de-duplicated and cleaned data to a new system, then a dummy or sample file from that system is needed to illustrate structure and field layout.
The next step is to see if address enhancement is required and if so, to split out the test data by country to maximise the improvement. Then comes the de-duplication process itself followed by consolidating data from duplicate records into a new master record. Finally, routines are developed and tested for the re-parenting of orphan transactions, QC, including determining the best approach to manually clarify conflicting results, and output of the cleansed sample data to the new system for evaluation and checking.
Upon acceptance, then the full data cleansing work can commence taking similar steps as outlined above.
RADIUS...
...is the name Tech4T give to our Rapid Analytical Data Improvement Utility Solution. It comprises a collection of specialist data utility, cleansing, address enhancement, de-duplication, merge-purge, restructuring and analysis software programmes - bundles of which may be tailored according to user needs. For instance, it enables you to migrate data across database and sales lead/CRM systems and eliminates duplicate data quickly and efficiently. It identifies duplicate records in a single database or cross-matches to other databases, suppression files, mailing lists and enhancement data sets. And it connects directly to your databases via ODBC with no importing of data into a rigid structure needed.
Each module is fast and easy to use, and focused on streamlining what potentially can be time consuming and labour intensive tasks. Different aspects of the data conversion, enhancement and management process are comprehensively handled and quickly expose and resolve the potential areas where poor quality data is causing problems - either directly or indirectly.
RADIUS protects the value, accuracy and completeness of your data and lays the solid foundations for the analysis and targeting processes.
