Identify and merge duplicate contact records

The benefits of detecting multiple contact records and preventing future duplication are:

Financial

• Save marketing costs by not sending out duplicate mailings
• Make profitable business decisions based on reliable and accurate data
• Removing duplicates means fewer records to enhance, analyse and suppress later on
• Save money on maintaining your contact data

Brand perception

• Avoid complaints and negative PR from customers about duplicate communications
• Ensure your business is environmentally friendly by not sending duplicate mailings
• Avoid contacting the same person twice in a campaign

Improved data quality

• Maintain an accurate, single customer view
• Make informed business decisions based on accurate data and reporting
• Prioritise matching components and tailor solution to your business process needs
• Compare two contact lists for overlapping records
• Create a complete, merged set of details for each contact

Business processes

• Save time by not entering duplicate contact records
• Accurate record keeping and data organisation
• Reduce information security risks - as an in-house solution, QAS Unify allows you to retain control of your data and removes the need for you to send it off-site for duplicate checking.

QAS Unify has two modes of operation:

Real-time de-duplication: duplication prevention at the point a person's contact details are entered into your database. This works by searching for a specified contact against your database. If an exact or similar record is found, the solution will return these records. This offers the option of selecting an existing contact record from within your database for editing, rather than risking a duplicate record being added.

Bulk de-duplication: allows you to identify and merge duplicate contact records in bulk from your database on a regular basis. This can be done by de-duping a single file or database, or by comparing two files or databases for similar or identical records.

Features of QAS Unify include:

• Support for large data volumes - Identify and merge duplicates at a rate of 2 million records per hour for data sources of up to 40 million records in size.
• Pre-set and custom matching scenarios - make it easy to group records associated with individuals, families, households and businesses.
• Intuitive rule builders - give you complete control over how duplicates are identified, how the surviving records are selected and how duplicates are merged together.
• Multiple matching techniques - to ensure matching is successful and accurate. Phonetic, fuzzy and alias matching are among the techniques employed automatically.
• Exclusion lists of common words - define lists of frequently-occurring words such as "society" or "Ltd." to disregard when matching organisation names.
• Matches any type of information - find matches across names, businesses and addresses, as well as other types of information such as dates of birth and national insurance numbers. The full range of elements that can be matched means more accurate de-duplication.
• Import and export - from and to a variety of common file types and databases via ODBC or direct connection to MS SQL Server 2005 and 2008.

QAS Professional Services

With the assistance of QAS Professional Services, the de-duplication capabilities offered by QAS Unify can be integrated, automated and scheduled periodically to fit or be performed as a one-off bulk de-duplication run to fit in with your business workflow. Our training consultants are also on hand to share their expertise on QAS Unify with you.

Preventing the entry, identification and removal of duplicates in databases is essential to making the most effective use of a contact data and maintaining data quality.

Use our online tool to calculate how much your duplicates could be costing you. Calculate ROI by highlighting how much you could save with QAS Unify.

Download our QAS Unify product brochure