Benny, from the sales team, is responsible for retailers and distributors that have contracts to resell ACME’s products.
Benny needs to be able to check if a retailer or distributor already exists because ACME recently acquired a new company with a separate CRM.
Since Benny does not have clear visibility into other systems, they cannot identify the record since the record does not exist in their CRM. Additionally, the other company's CRM cannot identify the record based on a fuzzy match if Benny cannot provide information for an exact match like a unique identifier.
Benny has difficulty merging records in the ERP system once they've already been created because they may have orders associated with them. It is also common that existing records from another system contain information that is valuable to Benny, in the process where they are creating the new record. i.e., the customer may have made a purchase recently, have an open support issue, or in the process of paying debts. It is therefore of high value to know of the existing record as well as to prevent creation of duplicate records.
Due to their lack of knowledge of other engagements with the same customer, Benny cannot provide a positive customer experience. Additionally, they are increasing the risk of poor customer experiences in the future as they cause multiple copies of the same account with potential inconsistent data and increased complexity in merging the records later.
Current Duplicate Search
With the current system landscape, Benny has a difficult time determining if the retailer already exists. This leads Benny to create a duplicate retailer in their ERP.
Future Duplicate Search
With a Customer MDM solution in place, all data is ingested by STEP. This allows other systems to make Find Similar calls to STEP to determine if potential duplicates already exist. Benny can then make an informed decision to either update an existing record accordingly or create a new record.