clearMDM End to End Scenario
This article provides an example end to end scenario when matching and merging records, along with links to supporting documentation that will help with the setup and configuration.
Company Persona
This fictional Company, is an established and well-known Clothing retailer operating across Europe with standalone shops as well as within large Department stores. It also has an online shop through the website and therefore can ship worldwide. Their suppliers are mainly based in America although they do deal with a small number of designers across Europe.
The Marketing team are more than aware that they hold millions of records for Customers and Contacts, many of which are duplicates of the same person or Company. They are also aware that some of the information held is not necessarily in the correct format or valid.
They want to implement a system to remove any duplicate records and also validate that the information held, is the most up to date and most likely to be ‘real’. One Master Record should hold all of this information.
Field Evaluation
The relevant teams within the Company have analysed the Account and Contact records to determine which fields they would like retained and updated to the Master Record. This process is the most important and first step in the clearMDM implementation.
The following fields across the Account and Contact Target Objects have been selected:
Name – Account Name, First Name, Last Name and Title
Date of Birth – Birthdate
Phone – Phone, Mobile, Home Phone, Opt In/out
Email – Email Address, Opt In/out
Billing Address – Billing Street, Billing City, Billing County/State, Billing Post Code/Zip Code, Billing Country
Mailing Address – Mailing Street, Mailing City, Mailing County/State, Mailing Post Code/Zip Code, Mailing Country
Website – Website
Each field needs to be determined as to whether the newest, oldest or quality value is retained on the Master Record.
Target Objects
The Blocking Key is the first step in providing the initial grouping of records to which matching rules are then applied. When a record is ‘Normalised’ it has the Blocking Key Set and can be based upon characters taken from up to 3 fields. If a record does not have a Blocking Key set then it is not matched at all. For this Company, the Blocking Key will be based upon the First Name Last Name and Email address (Contacts), and Account Name and Billing City (Accounts). The following Training Article explains how to setup the Blocking Key, just substitute the values for those stated.
Data Sources
A Data Source defines a Source Object to Target Object mapping. Record matching and merging operations start with a Target Object and process all Data Sources which have the same Target Object defined. The following Training Article explains how to set this up.
Merge Rules
By identifying the fields that the Master Record will be updated with, Attribute Groups can be created within clearMDM by means of a rule(s) per field(s). The following Training Article explains how to set this up, just substitute the values with the fields identified.
Blocking Key Process Requests
Once the Merge Rules have been setup, the next step would be to validate the results. Using the Blocking Key Process Request during the test cycles helps do this. This Training Article explains how to do this.
Once testing has validated the end result , a Job Schedule can be setup to run the batch jobs at a time that is convenient.
To find out more about clearMDM, please do not hesitate to contact us at hello@clearmdm.com.
Article last reviewed: 2024-01-15
