Solving Duplication and Data Retention Challenges After Migrating to HubSpot (Interview With Matthias Werner of Data Virtuality)

Migrating from one CRM to another is a process that is fraught with challenges. The old and new CRMs may have differences in fields, data cleaning features, automation systems, and data collection processes. As a result, moving data often requires large-scale changes to processes across an organization.

This is something that Insycle customer Matthias Werner—Head of Finance and Analytics at Data Virtuality, the leading data virtualization software solution—found out the hard way, as he recounted during our recent interview.

"Over years, without clear deduplication strategies, we accumulated a lot of duplicates in our CRM. It was a significant challenge for us,” Matthias said. 

After migrating from Salesforce to HubSpot, the company had to work around the limited customization options for merging duplicate records and controlling how important field data was retained, that HubSpot offers. 

Salesforce is a CRM with deep deduplication customization and multiple options for data automation that give companies a lot of control over the merging process. HubSpot doesn’t have the same control. Without the ability to build advanced rulesets for deduplication, Matthias watched as duplicates came in undetected and piled up in HubSpot. The duplicate records cluttered up the database, negatively impacting operations across the company and causing confusion among sales teams.

If Data Virtuality couldn’t solve its new duplicates problem, it was going to miss opportunities and feel the impact on revenue. But Matthias is a big advocate of proper data management and puts a lot of focus on CRM data hygiene. He was determined to find a solution.

“Treat your CRM like it’s a product,” he said in our interview.

By that, he meant that you should consistently evaluate your employees’ user experience when using your CRM. What do they like? What do they not like? What are their hangups? What kind of recommendations do they have for improvement? Your CRM is often the most-used software inside of your company. In treating your CRM implementation like a product, you push yourself to always build and improve on what you have, and the company is better for it as a result.

In this interview, Matthias delved into the unique challenges of deduplication and data retention that Data Virtuality faced after its migration to HubSpot CRM, how it impacted the business, and how the company ultimately used Insycle to solve the problem automatically on an ongoing basis.

“Treat your CRM like it’s a product.” - Matthias Werner, Head of Finance and Analytics at Data Virtuality.

Migrating from Salesforce to HubSpot Created New Deduplication Challenges

When Data Virtuality made the strategic decision to migrate from Salesforce to HubSpot, it was aware that the process would come with its own set of challenges. However, as Matthias explained, the scope of the duplicate problem was becoming particularly relevant, due to HubSpot’s limited capabilities.

In Salesforce, the master record detection and data retention was less of a problem because its built-in merge feature allows to select the data to be retained field-wise.

In HubSpot, however, the company was limited to deduplicating contacts by user token, email address, and record ID. And while this caught and merged many of the duplicates that entered the system, a healthy percentage was still squeaking by.

Additionally, HubSpot offers no control over how data is retained in the master record during the merging process. Instead, HubSpot keeps the most recently updated data in each field by default, aside from a few fields that are handled in a specific way. The absence of data retention customization features left the company vulnerable to data loss.

“After the migration, I started to look at this whole deduplication topic in more detail. And actually, the challenges we had were also good opportunities to review how we were doing things. We had no standard patterns. We just had to trust that everybody was following our rules and that nobody was entering the wrong info, leading to some undesired results. It was a good opportunity to introduce a more standardized approach,” Matthias said.

Duplicate data entries can lead to a host of problems, including skewed analytics, wasted resources, and decreased productivity. Additionally, they create confusing situations for sales and support teams, leading to less enjoyable customer experiences throughout the customer lifecycle.  

“After the migration, I started to look at this whole deduplication topic in more detail. And actually, the challenges we had were also good opportunities to review how we were doing things. We had no standard patterns. We just had to trust that everybody was following our rules and that nobody was entering the wrong info, leading to some undesired results. It was a good opportunity to introduce a more standardized approach,” Matthias said.

The Inability to Effectively Deal With Duplicate Records Created Confusion for the Sales Team

The inability to effectively manage duplicate records in its new CRM environment led to a significant amount of confusion among the sales team at Data Virtuality. The presence of duplicate records resulted in inconsistent record ownership and uncertainty and inefficiency within the team. This inconsistency was further exacerbated when post-merge master records were left with inaccurate lead statuses in their sales pipeline, which made it difficult for the team to accurately track and manage leads.

“If you zoom out a bit, duplicates certainly distort your analytics, which is also an essential part of our operation’s data-driven approach. Our CRM is supposed to be the single source of truth for lead and customer data. And the damage of duplicates multiplies when [the CRM] is synced with other systems,” Matthias Werner explained.

Relying on HubSpot’s data retention features during the merging process also increased the risk of losing valuable data. Because Data Virtuality could not specify which data should be retained during the merge, important information was more likely to be overwritten by less relevant data from the most recently updated record. In addition, there was no simple way to audit merged records, so it was difficult to even become aware of the overwrites.

The confusion and inefficiency caused by these issues had a direct impact on the sales team's productivity and effectiveness. It became clear that a more sophisticated solution was needed to handle the deduplication and data retention challenges that Data Virtuality was facing in its migration to HubSpot.

“The damage of duplicates multiplies when it is synced with other systems.”

How Discovering Insycle Helped Data Virtuality Merge Duplicates in HubSpot With Complete Data Retention Control

The solution to Data Virtuality's deduplication and data retention challenges came in the form of Insycle, a tool that Matthias discovered in a popular RevOps Slack community. Insycle offered the advanced deduplication capabilities that Data Virtuality needed along with complete control over data retention, effectively bridging the gap between HubSpot and Salesforce.

In our interview, Matthias shared his experience with Insycle. Insycle’s ability to use any database field as a duplicate matching field made a huge difference for Data Virtuality.

“When merging contacts, we were mainly identifying duplicates by looking at records with the same name, similar email, same phone number, or similar domain. We use multiple templates with variations of those fields to catch more duplicates,” Matthias said.

Insycle gave Data Virtuality more control over the resulting master record after the merge.

“One of our main criteria is definitely the lead status. I created a hierarchy of rules, using Insycle, to identify the master record based on the lead status,” Matthias said.

He explained that lead status was the primary condition they’d use in master record selection. Then, if no master record was identifiable based on this condition, then they would look at the last activity date to ensure that they kept data from the record where the most recent activity happened. Other fields Data Virtuality used in its rulesets included the number of associated contacts and deals.

“We also use the Create Date field as a failsafe, choosing the master record by the earliest create date,” Matthias explained.

This approach allowed Data Virtuality to prioritize the most relevant and up-to-date data during the deduplication process. But the customization didn't stop there. Data Virtuality also used Insycle’s field-by-field data retention settings to ensure that the most useful data was always retained when merging.

“Once we have identified the master record, I set up field rules to define which values we want to retain. We have some internal considerations there. For example, we often want to keep the first conversion data from a duplicate group, or data from the first form a lead filled out,” Matthias said.

For instance, Matthias was able to ensure that records that had the lead status of “Customer” kept that status post-merge. That way, contacts would not be inaccurately identified as leads, which would have resulted in a worse experience for them.

With Insycle, Data Virtuality was able to implement a customized deduplication process that met its specific needs. It could define rules for identifying the master record and specify which data to retain for each field. This level of control ensured that the company did not lose any critical information during the deduplication process.

“You can never completely avoid creating duplicates. But it's essential to have a solution that allows you to limit them while also handling the merging process in a custom way,” Matthias said.

The introduction of Insycle into Data Virtuality’s data management process effectively resolved the deduplication and data retention issues associated with the migration to HubSpot. The tool not only helped the company maintain the integrity of its CRM data, but also improved the efficiency of its sales and marketing processes.

“You can never completely avoid creating duplicates. But it's essential to have a solution that allows you to limit them while also handling the merging process in a custom way,” Matthias said.

With the Insycle templates running smoothly and keeping Data Virtuality’s HubSpot CRM nearly duplicate-free, Matthias turned his attention toward getting other colleagues involved.

“In the beginning, as an admin in the initial implementation phase of using Insycle, I was handling it on my own. I had to get a feeling for how it worked and test and validate my templates until I was very confident. Now, we’re looking to pass some of this merging work to teammates after a little internal training,” he said.

Solve Data Retention During Deduplication With Insycle

Insycle is a robust HubSpot data management solution that offers a comprehensive suite of features to address the challenges of data retention when merging duplicates in HubSpot. It provides a sophisticated approach to identifying and merging duplicate records, allowing businesses to maintain the correct data for every field in their HubSpot CRM database.

Identify and Merge Duplicate Records in Advanced Ways

Insycle's advanced duplicate identification system allows you to use any field in your CRM as a duplicate matching field, catching more duplicates than you would through standard CRM features.

With Insycle, you can use any field in HubSpot as a duplicate matching field and can opt for exact matching or similar matching. You can also ignore certain aspects of matching records, providing flexibility.

Insycle has advanced data retention features as well.

Rule-Based Master Record Selection

Insycle's rule-based master record selection feature delivers deep control over the merging process. You can set rules to determine which record should be retained as the master record after the merge.

Rule-Based Data Retention Rules For Every HubSpot Field

Then, you’ll have full control over data retention on a field-by-field basis. For example, you could instruct Insycle to prioritize the contact owner from the record with the most recent activity or consolidate notes from all merged records into one field.

Additionally, Insycle can collect data from multiple duplicate records to preserve specific fields across the entire duplicate group. For example, if your duplicate contacts have multiple email addresses, you can direct Insycle to gather all these emails into the additional email field, ensuring no valuable data is lost in the merge.

Insycle Delivers Advanced Deduplication With Complete Data Retention Control

Insycle's deep data retention features give businesses unparalleled control over their data during the merging process, which is critical for accurate and reliable customer records. You can create custom data retention rules for every field to ensure you hold onto your most critical information during merges.

But Insycle is more than just a deduplication tool. It's a complete HubSpot CRM data management platform with a suite of features to streamline and enhance your data management processes.

Explore how Insycle can reshape your HubSpot data management processes and help you hold onto your most pertinent information when merging pesky duplicates.