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Preventing Duplicate Data in Salesforce: Best Practices and Tips

Salesforce CRM is a popular customer relationship management platform used by businesses around the world. One of the key features of Salesforce is its ability to prevent duplicates in customer data, which can be a major headache for businesses. In this article, we will take a detailed look at how Salesforce CRM prevents duplicates and why this is an important feature for businesses.

Duplicate data can be a major problem for businesses, especially when it comes to customer information. Having multiple records for the same customer can lead to confusion and inaccuracy, which can result in lost sales and unhappy customers. To prevent this, Salesforce CRM has a number of built-in features that help identify and prevent duplicates.


1. Matching Rules in Salesforce CRM

One of the key ways that Salesforce prevents duplicates is through the use of matching rules. These rules are used to compare new records to existing records, and if they match, they are flagged as duplicates. 

Matching rules can be customized to suit the needs of a particular business, and they can be set up to match on a variety of different fields. This allows businesses to create rules that are specific to their needs, and ensures that only relevant records are flagged as duplicates.

Here are some specific examples of using Salesforce Matching Rules:

  • You can activate the pre-loaded Salesforce matching rules built for Account, Contact, Lead and Person Account.
    Salesforce Standard Matching Rules
  • You can create a matching rule that matches records based on the customer’s email address. This will ensure that records with the same email address are automatically merged, eliminating any duplicates in your database.
  • You can create a matching rule that matches records based on the customer’s name, address, and phone number. This will ensure that records with the same name, address, and phone number are automatically merged, eliminating any duplicates in your database.
  • You can create a matching rule that matches records based on the customer’s account number. This will ensure that records with the same account number are automatically merged, eliminating any duplicates in your database.

Learn more about Matching Rules in Salesforce CRM


2. Using Duplicate Records in Salesforce

In addition to matching rules, Salesforce also has a number of other features that help prevent duplicates. For example, users can use the “Find Duplicates” tool to quickly search for and identify duplicates in their data. This tool allows users to search for duplicates based on specific criteria, such as name, email address, or company name.

Another useful feature is the “Duplicate Record Sets” report, which provides a summary of all duplicate records in a Salesforce CRM account. This report allows users to see how many duplicates they have, and which records are duplicates, so they can take action to merge or delete them.

Manage Duplicate Records in Salesforce


3. Data Maintenance and Routine Data Cleansing

Regularly review and clean up your data. Over time, it’s inevitable that some duplicates will be created in Salesforce, either by mistake or due to changes in data. To prevent these duplicates from causing problems, it’s important to regularly review and clean up your data. This can involve using Salesforce’s duplicate management tools to identify and merge duplicates, as well as manually reviewing and updating data as needed.


4. External Tools and Services for Duplicate Prevention

Use external tools and services for duplicate prevention. In addition to Salesforce’s built-in tools, there are a number of external tools and services that can help you prevent duplicates in Salesforce. For example, you can use a deduplication tool that integrates with Salesforce, or a data cleansing service that can help you identify and fix duplicates in your data.
 
DuplicateCheck by Plauti is the most popular Duplicate Management and Data Cleansing tool

Duplicate Check by Plauti
 
By following these tips and implementing best practices for duplicate prevention, you can ensure that your Salesforce data is accurate and up-to-date, and avoid the problems and inefficiencies caused by duplicates. Happy selling!

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