11 Dec Prevent Duplicate Data within Salesforce

Duplicate data management and data stewardship are big challenges for all businesses. Databases that aren’t kept clean and updated can cause you to make unwise business decisions and affect your ability to execute quickly.

Fortunately, this can be prevented within Salesforce. You don’t have to rely on AppExchange products to prevent duplicated data anymore. The platform now offers Duplicate Data Management as a native feature.  If you’re using the Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, or Developer editions of Salesforce, you can detect duplicated data using Data.com Administration Duplicate Management (you don’t need a Data.com license).

Here are some of the features Salesforce’s native duplicate data management offers:

1. Prevent creation of duplicate records. You can set up the system so it will stop all users from entering duplicate records. It can alert the user that the information they’re adding is already in the system, block the data from being added, or you can set up email notifications whenever someone inadvertently duplicates data.
2. Check duplicates for Accounts, Contacts, Leads, and Custom objects. These objects are the most common areas that need duplication checking. You can also compare across different objects for duplicates. For example, you can check if the Lead you’re entering is already in your Contacts database and vice versa.
3. Check exact and approximate matches. You can set custom Matching Rules and Duplicate Rules to determine what is or isn’t duplicated data. You can create rules so approximate matches are also considered duplicates aside from exact ones (i.e. fuzzy logic).
4. Support across all devices. Whether your users are entering data on the computer, from their phones, or on tablets, Salesforce’s Duplicate Data Management will work no matter how the data is entered once activated. It will help keep your database clean regardless of how data is updated. Salesforce Duplicate Data Management is very useful feature that all organizations should take advantage of as they implement Salesforce. While user training is key to keep your data clean and updated, the feature is a great safety net to ensure duplicated data is not added to the system which increases your overall return on investment as you can trust and rely on your data to make wise business decisions.