What is Data Deduplication?
The process of identifying and merging or removing duplicate records in a database or CRM.
Definition
Data deduplication (dedup) finds and resolves duplicate records that accumulate in CRMs and databases. Duplicates happen when the same person or company gets entered multiple times through different channels (web forms, manual entry, data imports, integrations). Basic deduplication matches on exact fields (same email address). Advanced deduplication uses fuzzy matching ("John Smith" at "Acme Corp" vs. "J. Smith" at "Acme Corporation"), domain matching, and probabilistic algorithms to catch near-duplicates that exact matching misses.
Why It Matters
Duplicates wreck everything downstream. Lead routing breaks when the same company has three records assigned to different reps. Marketing sends the same person three emails. Pipeline reporting inflates because the same opportunity appears twice. Territory planning miscounts accounts. Sales reps waste time calling the same prospect that a colleague already spoke to. Studies estimate that 10-30% of CRM records are duplicates in the average B2B organization.
Example
Your CRM has three records for the same person: 'Michael Johnson' from a trade show scan, 'Mike Johnson' from a web form, and 'M. Johnson' imported via your data enrichment tool. All three have different email formats but the same company domain. A deduplication tool identifies all three as the same person, merges the records (keeping the most complete data from each), and assigns one clean master record to the correct account owner.