Duplicate customer records after Tolmere data load

Just spotted this in the Tolmere data - around three hundred customers we already have are showing up again. Need to dig into this before it causes problems with the dashboard pulls. Working on the details now.

After we loaded the Tolmere records into the brain, I've noticed we now have duplicate customer records. Looking at the data, I'd estimate around three hundred customers are appearing twice in the system - once from our existing Harcastle records and once from the Tolmere import. From what I can tell, these are the same companies, just showing up with different customer IDs. This is creating issues across the team because when our account managers look up a customer, they're seeing two records, which inflates the numbers on the dashboards and makes it unclear which one to use. I checked the data load process and everything went through cleanly on our end. My guess is that Tolmere's customer IDs don't align with ours, so the brain isn't recognising that these are the same customers and is indexing them as separate records. What's your recommendation for fixing this? Should we handle it at the source by updating the Tolmere connector settings, or would you prefer to set up matching rules within the brain to consolidate them? Thanks, Imran

Thanks for flagging this, Imran. Just so I've got this right: the Tolmere records are showing as separate customer entries rather than being matched to your existing records. And you're seeing this across around three hundred accounts? Have you had a chance to check if there's a pattern to which ones are duplicated, or is it consistent across all Tolmere customers that have a match in your system? I'm going to pick this up with the technical team to see whether we can handle this at the connector level or if we need to configure matching rules on our end. Kate

Hi Imran, I've been looking at the Tolmere integration and I think the issue is that the customer IDs in their system don't overlap with your existing ones, so the brain is treating them as different records. Before I escalate this to the engineering team, can you confirm: are these duplicates causing a functional problem right now, or is it mainly an issue with the reporting? And have you had a chance to identify any of the duplicate pairs so we can use them as test cases? Also, roughly what percentage of your Tolmere records have a match in your existing customer base? Thanks, Kate

Hi Kate, Good questions. The duplicates are affecting functionality - our account managers are running queries and getting back inflated results. When they search for a customer by name, they're getting two records, which means the collections, tickets, and invoice history are split across both. So it's not just a reporting issue. I'd say around three hundred out of the roughly four to five hundred Tolmere customers have a match in our system. I can pull a sample of the matched pairs if that helps for testing. The ones I've spot-checked appear to be exact matches on company name, so there should be a way to deduplicate them. Just want to make sure we do this properly so we don't accidentally merge unrelated records. Let me know what you need from my end. Imran

Talked to Samir. Issue is that Tolmere customer IDs don't map to existing IDs. Need to either deduplicate at source by updating Tolmere connector to use company name matching, or set up deduplication rules in the brain. Going with option 1 - cleaner. Samir to implement matching logic. Will follow up with Imran once it's ready for testing.