Have you ever entered information into a record on your CRM only to not be able to find it the next time you search? It turns out that there are three different contact records all for the same individual, and information is scattered across these duplicate data points.

Duplicate data is an inherent risk in any database. Yet the success of your business will be based largely on the quality of your data. This means it’s critical that you not only avoid creating duplicate data, but when it does exist, you work to identify and eliminate it as quickly as possible.

The Hidden Costs of Duplicate Data

Few people go into their CRM with the intent of creating complications by entering duplicate data. But it happens. Each record ends up having some of the information, but no single record ends up with all of it. If anyone makes a decision based on incomplete information, that decision is likely to be flawed.

Experian found that as many as 94% of organizations lack data accuracy. When you’ve got duplicate data, it can negatively impact:

• Customer experience (sending the same email twice).
• Data compliance (difficulty managing deletion requests).
• Marketing campaign effectiveness (wasted spend).
• Storage costs (paying to store redundant information).

Duplicate data is a company-wide issue that you definitely need to focus on solving.

How Does Duplicate Data Enter Your System?

Leads are the most common suspect as they often come from multiple sources. For example, a customer might use a personal email for a webinar and a business email for a trade show, resulting in two records for the same person.

Duplicate data can also result from:

• Integration: If proper data governance isn’t in place.
• Data Imports: From third-party sources, mergers and acquisitions, and list uploads.
• Lack of Internal Process: Leaving sales reps free to create new records without searching first.

Quick and Easy Ways to Avoid Duplicate Data

If duplicate data causes all those issues, then the benefits of deduplicating data are clear: improved customer experience, reduced compliance risk, and optimized costs.

Here’s how to prevent duplicate data and minimize its impact:

1. Search Before Creating a Record: Encourage your team to take the extra time to search both the name and a few variations (Elizabeth, Beth, Liz) to ensure they’re not creating a new record for someone who already exists.
2. Deduplicating Tools: Run third-party tools weekly to scan your CRM system and build a list of duplicates for merging and/or deletion.
3. Duplicate Prevention Tools: Use tools that catch a record that looks to be a duplicate as it is being created.
4. Normalize Data Prior to Importing: Ensure all your records have consistent formatting to help catch duplicates when adding a large number of records.
5. Coordinate the Sales Team: Make it a habit for everyone to keep CRM data clean to reduce the opportunity for duplicate data to enter your systems.

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One More Easy Way to Prevent Duplicate Data

One of the main reasons for duplicate data in NetSuite CRM is that sales teams prioritize speed over accurate data entry. They let the administrative work pile up, and when they finally add new information, they rush the process, leading to duplicated contacts.

Instead, what if it was easier for the sales team to search, edit, create, and even delete CRM records right from their inbox?

That’s why we built ExtendSync for both Outlook and Gmail. This seamless email to NetSuite CRM integration lets users work where they’re most comfortable to add information to NetSuite CRM without needing to click over to that application.

• Got an email update? Search the contact record right from your inbox, edit the job title, and attach the email to the record.
• Need to create a new record? Create the NetSuite CRM contact record right from the email using the information supplied.

ExtendSync is the perfect solution for helping keep NetSuite data squeaky clean right from the source, minimizing the opportunity for duplicate data to enter your system in the first place.

Try ExtendSync in your inbox today, completely free. Get started here.