Automating Deduplication Across a Growing Media CRM

Business Needs

With CRM at the heart of commercial operations, maintaining high-quality, duplicate-free data became critical. Over 250,000 contacts were entering the system from websites, events, and livestream sign-ups, but free-text company names created multiple variations of the same organisation. Manual cleanup was slow, costly, and unsustainable. Ultima Media needed a scalable solution for deduplication, standardisation, and long-term data quality.

DQ Global Solution

DQ Global implemented an intelligent, rules-based deduplication and data quality framework within Workbooks CRM.

Business Benefits

• 80% of duplicates now handled automatically
• 60 hours saved per month in manual data review
• Improved marketing segmentation, sales account visibility, and reporting
• +7% overall CRM data health score
• +60% increase in data relevance
• CRM now a trusted commercial asset
• What was projected as a 26-week manual project was completed in just 4 weeks

Company Background

United Way of King County is a local non-profit serving the greater Seattle area. United Way has always taken pride in working to improve the community for everyone. They unite their donors, volunteers, community leaders, nonprofit partners, and government at all levels to solve challenges through innovation, compassion, and action.

They’re working to ensure everyone in the community has access to housing, food security, educational opportunities, and financial stability. And they won’t stop. When everyone works side by side, such a future is possible.

The Data Quality Challenge

Free-text company names created duplicate organisation records, inconsistent naming, and unclear account ownership. Real examples included:

• Ford Motor Company
• Henry Ford Motor Company
• Ford
• Ford of America
• Ford of Mexico

Each variation became a separate record in the CRM, making it difficult for sales to see the full account picture, causing marketing segmentation errors, and eroding trust in reporting. With 250,000+ contacts, manual review was time-consuming and error-prone, and duplicates would continue to grow without an automated solution. A solution was needed that could do the following:

• Fuzzy organisation matching and automated grouping of variations
• Standardised naming conventions and removal of legal suffix inconsistencies
• Scheduled workflows for ongoing deduplication

How Was This Impacting The Business?

Sales teams struggled to get a complete account view. Marketing campaigns returned inaccurate results due to duplicate and inconsistent records. Leadership lacked confidence in reporting. Without automation, duplicate records would continue to grow as the CRM expanded.

Install Process

"DQ Global was very supportive and hands-on during our initial setup and they made sure we understood the tool. Thanks to that training, updating our configurations is simple and straightforward, even creating new configurations from scratch after deploying to a new build."