Data duplicates. Every Salesforce admin has experienced the challenge of maintaining their client’s data hygiene. When employees are involved in entering data, there are a variety of causes for duplication to appear. Some root causes might be that the clients aren’t properly using the matching rules in Salesforce, users haven’t had enough training, or third-party database users just aren’t careful with their data. Poor data hygiene is a problem that needs attention if Salesforce is to deliver the value it promises.
In this article we’re going to explore database duplication issues, look at some of the causes, and examine the solutions Salesforce offers.
Combating Data Duplication
The first step to stopping data duplication in Salesforce is to know how the data gets created, used, modified, and duplicated. There are many matching rules that can be set up within Salesforce. Matching rules are predefined in Salesforce, but it’s critical to check them to make sure they make sense for the company you’re supporting. Once you can tell the difference between similar records in different databases, you can create best practices to avoid permanent duplicates.
For example, I recently built an integration with Salesforce and a third-party database. The database didn’t have a separate record for each contact, and there was contact information attached to the service call record but no way to see the history or unique information for each contact. Ideally, we would like to see contact data in the record to differentiate people with the same name or to correctly match misspelled contact data. I used fuzzy matching rules with a flow to search for each contact by name, but Salesforce comes with a contact matching rule of the first name, second name, email, and phone number.
Run “Duplicate Check” First
Unfortunately, a first name and email match are enough to trigger a soft error when manually entering data or a hard error when using automation. I turned off the email matching rules in Salesforce while leaving them in the flow. Because this client had contacts who shared an email address, the email matching rule was not a good fit for their Salesforce environment.
To work around this issue, I installed the managed package Duplicate Check. Salesforce’s Duplicate Check is a managed package that uses object-level “jobs” to look for duplicate records. There are different prices available, including a free tier that should be enough for most of the smaller tasks on Salesforce. While the best solution would be to prevent duplication, sometimes the only solution is to reduce data duplication and then correct those duplicated records with a tool like Duplicate Check.
Educate Your End-Users
Education is a powerful weapon in the fight against duplication. We can avoid redundancy through user training on best practices for Salesforce. If we set up a matching rule, Salesforce can warn us about duplicate records or give us a soft error but relying on Salesforce automation alone is not enough of a safety net. Users must be trained to check for records before adding new data.
Before creating a record, it’s a good idea to see if it already exists. For instance, if a user cannot locate a specific Lead in Salesforce, they may manually create a Lead record for the client, only to find that the record was converted, and converted Leads are not visible to that user. By searching for that record, they may find an existing Opportunity with insight into why the sale has slowed down. User education gives people the skills to use Salesforce and keeps them from creating new records and entering the same information twice.
Use the Tools Salesforce Offers
Finally, reporting and dashboards are wonderful tools in the fight against duplication. You can find anomalies in the datasets using reports that provide the needed information. I’ve noticed that these statistical outliers rarely have anything to do with duplication, and that you can also discover issues about data hygiene from these reports. There should always be an investigation into anomalies to make sure there are no underlying technical issues affecting the data. It will allow admins and analysts to learn more about the business they are servicing.
For example, if there is an opportunity that has been staged much longer than similar related Opportunities, user education may expose the issue. An investigation revealed that a former employee still had access to a client’s Opportunities, despite no longer working for the company. To protect the integrity of your client’s data, you need to know that reporting is for more than just decision-maker insights. This step is crucial for protecting and maintaining data hygiene.
A Basic Approach to Avoiding Data Duplication
Data hygiene involves more than just avoiding duplication. We should also address other data hygiene issues when accessing the client’s data. When Salesforce administrators know how to deal with duplicate data, they will have the skills to better understand and deal with other data hygiene problems. This way, businesses can grow over time without having to pay for expensive and frequent makeovers if they have the tools and procedures in place to stop duplication.
