March 26, 2025

Most businesses see duplicate records in their Salesforce org as a problem to fix... An annoying side effect of disconnected systems, user errors, or messy data entry. And while duplicates certainly create challenges and need to be addressed, they also tell an important story about your business: growth.

Duplicates often emerge when an organization is scaling. More teams, more tools, and more customer interactions mean data is flowing in from multiple sources from marketing automation, sales outreach, customer support, and beyond. This is a sign that your company is doing something right. The problem isn’t the existence of duplicates; it’s what you do with them.

The Opportunity in Duplicate Data

Rather than viewing duplicates as a purely negative issue, consider them as an opportunity to:

• Build a more complete customer picture
  • A duplicate often represents multiple interactions with the same account or contact. One record might have marketing engagement data, another could have sales notes, and a third might have support history. Merging them correctly creates a richer, more valuable customer profile.
• Identify trends in your business growth
  • If you’re seeing an increase in duplicate records, it’s worth asking why. Is marketing generating more leads? Has the sales team expanded its outreach? Are new integrations pulling in customer data from additional sources? Duplicates often indicate that your business processes are scaling and need refinement.
• Establish or update your data governance strategy
  • Duplicates can be a sign that it’s time to revisit your data management processes. A clear data governance strategy (defining how data should be entered, maintained, and deduplicated) helps keep Salesforce clean and reliable. But strategy alone isn’t enough. You need to get your colleagues on the same page through training. Getting buy-in will help reduce duplicate creation in the first place and keep your system scalable as your business grows. o Want to learn more about data governance? Check out Salesforce’s guide here.
• Improve cross-team alignment
  • Multiple records for the same contact could suggest that different teams are working in silos. By deduplicating strategically, you create a single source of truth, making it easier for teams to collaborate and ensuring no opportunity slips through the cracks.

Striking the Right Balance: User Freedom vs. Data Structure

The reality is that overly restrictive data entry rules can discourage Salesforce adoption. If users are forced to jump through too many hoops before creating a record, they may avoid entering valuable information altogether. The ability to quickly add contacts, leads, and accounts without friction keeps users engaged and ensures that critical data makes it into the system in the first place.

However, without any structure, Salesforce can quickly become chaotic leading to redundant efforts, misaligned reporting, and confusion across teams. That’s why the right approach isn’t to completely prevent duplicates but to manage them in a way that balances ease of use for users with the structure leadership needs for decision-making.

The Right Way to Handle Duplicates

The key isn’t just eliminating duplicates but handling them in a way that enhances your data. Instead of blocking record creation, businesses should embrace a smarter deduplication strategy that:

• Allows users to work freely
  • Keep Salesforce flexible enough for reps to capture data quickly without barriers and in the loop on your organization’s data governance framework and WHY it matters.
• Automatically surfaces potential duplicates
  • Instead of forcing users to manually check for existing records, let automation highlight possible matches in real time.
• Intelligently merges records
  • Ensure that when duplicates are combined, no valuable information is lost. A good deduplication tool should consolidate records based on data quality rules rather than simply deleting them.

That’s where Cloudingo comes in. By intelligently managing duplicates, Cloudingo allows companies to maintain user engagement while ensuring data remains structured and actionable. Instead of forcing a choice between rigid rules and messy data, businesses get the best of both worlds: an easy-to-use Salesforce instance for end users and a clean, reliable database for leadership insights.

So, the next time you spot duplicates in your Salesforce org, don’t just see them as a problem to fix. See them as a sign of growth and an opportunity to fine-tune your data strategy. Because when handled the right way, duplicates aren’t just a good thing—they’re a key ingredient in a thriving, scalable business.