Hello Everyone,
At the start of the pandemic nearly all of our staff was laid off and as a result many non-critical tasks like reviewing new records and merging constituents fell by the way side. So... two years later we have around 60,000-120,000 new records and over 3,000 merges to complete. In the past we delegated data clean up and merging to the box office, but due to continuing staffing shortages we'll need to find another way.
Does anyone have experience using automated procedures to clean up data and schedule merges. Is this possible? We'd like to add CSIs to new records with invalid or missing addresses. I vaguely remember reading a forum post a while back about some tessitura organizations who outsourced data clean up and merges. I can't seem to find that post again. Has anybody tried this? Anyways, I'd love to hear what you all do and discuss the best ways to insure clean consistent data.
Thank you,
Joseph
We're about to have Tessitura run their "Clean Sweep" service on our database. It's Merge/Purge and NCOA. It's a 12 week process, but seems to be worth it. Our database was not maintained well for a long time, so we have nearly 300k accounts and mail services usually come back with several hundred duplicates (per piece). Good Luck!
I personally wouldn't trust automation to schedule merges, because the identified potential duplicates aren't always duplicates. I personally go through merges weekly as part of my tasks as database manager. I used to go through new records but haven't had the time in many years. I saw another post recently where Heath Wilder shared some SQL that will clean up case issues. Curious why you're wanting to add CSIs to new records with invalid or missing addresses. What do you plan to do with them?
Thank you! I'll look into the clean sweep service.
We allow anyone to schedule merges as they find them however before the procedure is run I go through each requested merge to double check request. Then the procedure is run.
There is always hundreds of Potential duplicate accounts but lately we have not had the time or manpower to go through all as well.
Adding CSIs was something we started long before I joined the team. I think the idea was that if a patron with a bad address were to call or come into the box office, the box office staff would be able to update the patron's record. It may be a bit over kill though.
I'm also curious how your organization uses the new record summary report. How often you run it? Do you use it to check all new accounts or only to verify that imports imported correctly? Can it be used for anything else?
I schedule the New Record Report to run every morning and send to a small group. Our on-site Membership Team (front-line rep/cashier position) goes through the records during the slower afternoon periods to do basic clean-up that is not "damaging", meaning they don't change info; simply clean-up. They clean-up caps/no caps. Bizarre garbage in name fields (addresses, email addresses, zips, etc. that often make their way into wrong fields). We also have the RA Button for address verification. They do that, too. It is generally easy to identify unverified addresses because the zip is missing the +4. RA adds that.
As far as Merges, I think most of us are in the same position that we don't 100% trust automation and it needs physical eyes to do best, but no one has time!
I am also in the "I don't trust auto-merges" camp. And like everyone else here, merging is not at the top of me "do, or everyone will die" list. I think my question is - how are you all handling guest checkout accounts? Are you merging them into existing accounts if there's a match, or do you leave guest checkout accounts alone?
We all are showing signs of a condition I call the "fear of the 'one way' merge".
This is sadly often a trauma many CRM managers have, not just on Tessitura but other name brand CRMs like SalesForce as well.
We merge accounts if there's one existing.