This post is part of a series that explores problems our customers have fixed using Insycle. Each post outlines the challenge and shows the solution step by step.
The Challenge: Duplicate Records Were Causing Sales Confusion
PayFit, a rapidly growing payroll and HR technology company, found itself grappling with data quality issues that threatened to undermine its sales and marketing efforts. Alena Shelkova, the growth operations manager responsible for CRM data quality, described a complex and challenging situation stemming from PayFit's dual CRM ecosystem. Payfit uses HubSpot for marketing operations and Salesforce for sales processes, and the synchronization between the two systems added an extra layer of complexity.
The scale of PayFit's database exacerbated the problem. To understand the scale of the problem, Shelkova worked with the data team to estimate the number of duplicates, and this analysis revealed a high duplicate rate that translated to hundreds of thousands of duplicate entries.
"We had about 30% of all our accounts in HubSpot as duplicates, and about 25-30% of contacts were also duplicates. Basically, one-third of our records were duplicates,” Shelkova said.
This duplicate problem had far-reaching consequences across PayFit's operations. Sales efficiency suffered as multiple representatives unknowingly were in contact with the same prospects or with different contacts from the same company, wasting valuable time pursuing already-engaged or disqualified leads.
Marketing efforts were similarly impacted, introducing a real risk of nurturing existing clients with unaligned content or re-engaging previously disqualified leads. The duplicate records also created roadblocks in PayFit’s ability to create complete profiles of customers and accounts processes, with context split up among the duplicate records.
To combat these issues, Payfit implemented a Salesforce workflow identifying duplicates based on domain, name, or phone number, and left a message to the sales rep working on the account. They also blocked duplicates at creation when they shared a domain or company name with another record. Salesforce users were also able to manually merge duplicates in Salesforce when they stumbled across them.
The company explored developing a custom in-house deduplication solution. However, after estimating the significant developer resources and time required, it was decided to be more efficient to search for a third-party app that could bridge the gap.
Additionally, the Growth Ops team led an effort to ensure that data was as complete and up-to-date as possible. And while this helped them maintain a high level of data quality in their CRM, the duplicates issue was more complex to solve because:
- The database size was large, making querying and comparing records difficult.
- Detecting duplicates can be tricky. For example, company and contact names may only be a partial match, top-level domains can differ between duplicate records, and phone number formats can vary.
- There was no tool to monitor and merge duplicates automatically.
- Company records in HubSpot and account records in Salesforce cannot be merged while the sync is active, further complicating an already complex situation.
With the duplicate issue continuing to impact operations and existing methods that couldn’t address the problem’s scale and complexity, the PayFit team searched for a powerful and flexible solution.
"We had about 30% of all our accounts in HubSpot as duplicates, and about 25-30% of contacts were also duplicates. Basically, one-third of our records were duplicates,”- Alena Shelkova, Growth Operations Manager, PayFit
How Duplicate Company Records in CRMs Impact Business Operations
The challenges PayFit encountered as a result of its duplication problem are not unique to PayFit. Duplicate data wreaks havoc across an organization in many ways, including:
Inefficient sales processes: When there are duplicate records, sales representatives may contact the same prospect multiple times, causing customers to have confusing experiences when engaging with sales.
Skewed analytics and reporting: Duplicate records distort key metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). This can lead to inaccurate forecasting, misallocating resources, and poor strategic decision-making based on flawed data.
Decreased marketing effectiveness: Duplicate records may lead marketing teams to send redundant or conflicting messages to the same company. This can result in oversaturation, confusion, and a decrease in the overall effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
Impaired account-based marketing (ABM) strategies: ABM relies on a clear, unified view of each account. Duplicate records break this view, making implementing strategies and identifying decision-makers challenging.
Reduced customer satisfaction: Different team members interacting with a company based on conflicting information from duplicate records can lead to inconsistent customer experiences. This can frustrate clients and damage relationships.
The Solution: Insycle’s Company Deduplication With the HubSpot-Salesforce Sync Active
After careful consideration, PayFit chose Insycle as its weapon of choice against data duplication. Alena spearheaded the implementation, developing a comprehensive and nuanced approach to addressing the company’s complex duplicate scenarios.
At the heart of PayFit’s strategy was the creation of an extensive template library. Alena developed approximately 30 different deduplication templates, each designed to address specific scenarios and edge cases. This allowed for fine-tuned control over the deduplication process, ensuring that even complex duplicate situations could be handled accurately.
"I created about 30 different templates to deduplicate everything. They're quite complex and address various scenarios we encounter. We had some rules. For example, if the same domain exists in two different countries, it doesn't mean they're duplicates because they are worked on in parallel by different countries. So I had to put country filters for almost each template," Shelkova said.
An Insycle Merge Duplicates template matching duplicate records using first name, last name, email, and account name, with advanced matching criteria.
The sophistication of Insycle's rule-setting capabilities played a crucial role in PayFit's success. Alena implemented country-specific filters to prevent merging records from different regions, a critical feature for a company operating across multiple markets. The templates utilized a combination of exact and similar matching for company names and domains, allowing for flexibility in catching duplicates while avoiding false positives.
An Insycle Merge Duplicates template matching duplicate records using domain name, country, and account name.
"Insycle has a lot of great features to detect duplicates, great features to decide which account we want to keep, and also to copy specific values. It works great and has made a significant change for our CRM,” Shelkova said.
But detecting and merging duplicates in a bulk is only a half of the job—the real challenge is to limit duplicates moving forward. Using Insycle’s scheduled automations and HubSpot Workflow integration which allows for duplicates to be detected and merged immediately after a record is created and before communications with the account begin, PayFit was able to ensure that their duplicate rate remained healthy moving forward.
"Insycle has a lot of great features to detect duplicates, decide which account we want to keep, and also copy specific values. It works great and has made a significant change for our CRM,” - Alena Shelkova, Growth Operations Manager, PayFit
Transformative Results: A 70% Reduction in Duplicate Companies
PayFit's persistent efforts with Insycle yielded impressive results. The duplicate rate for company records plummeted, and the contact record duplicate rate dropped as well.
"After using Insycle, we now have only 9% duplicates for company records, down from 25-30%. For contacts, we're at 19%, with most of these likely being legitimate records with the same names," Shelkova said
These improvements catalyzed several significant benefits across the organization. Sales efficiency soared as the number of instances of multiple representatives contacting the same prospect drastically reduced. The sales team could now focus on genuine new opportunities without the worry that they were unknowingly double-contacting leads.
Learn more about how Insycle can help you revolutionize your CRM data management and unblock your business.
