Episode Six: Dealing With Duplicates
Host: George L'Heureux, Principal Consultant, Data Strategy
Guest: Donald Folk, Principal Data Advisor
In this episode of Data Talks, we discuss different ways of addressing the very real problem of duplicate data.
Just like incomplete and inaccurate data, duplicate data can have negative implications for sales, marketing, and finance teams –actually for anyone within the organization who uses data. Duplicates can increase costs of marketing programs, create sales conflicts, and cause inefficiencies throughout the organization.
There are many causes of duplicate data including human error, subjectivity in entry, and collecting data from multiple sources. Sometimes, as our expert shares, it’s even the result of a well-intentioned internal program. But reasons and repercussions aside, there are things that we can do, not only to fix duplicates once they occur, but to prevent them from happening in the first place and how the D-U-N-S Number plays an important role as the unique identifier to consolidate those duplicates.