In a similar context to my other DIT idea, the scenario is that third-party partners often supply spreadsheets of contacts to be imported into the club's CRM. I use the Duplicate Identification Tool for this to identify which contacts are pre-existing in the CRM before importing the new contacts.

However, the data file from the third party often contains additional or updated information about the contacts.

Scenario 1:

• Matt may already exist in the CRM, however not have any phone numbers recorded.
• The third party file contains data on Matt which includes his business and mobile/cell numbers.
• Currently the Duplicate Identification Tool is able to match Matt from the data file with Matt in the CRM, however that's all that happens.
• Ideally, the DIT would realise that the data file contains additional information about Matt that is not present in the CRM, and automatically append that data into the contact record

Scenario 2:

• Matt may already exist in the CRM with a phone number and address
• The third party file contains data on Matt which include a different phone number and address
• Currently the Duplicate Identification Tool is able to match Matt from the data file with Matt in the CRM, however that's all that happens.
• Ideally, the DIT would realise that the data file contains different information about Matt than is present in the CRM, and would prompt to modify Matt's CRM record with the new information

Ideally, I'd love to have options within the Duplicate Identification Tool whereby I could control the updating of existing or the augmentation of new data from the upload file into the individual contacts. I feel this would have a positive impact on overall data quality, as use of the system this way would continually add to not only volume of contact, but also the integrity of the existing contacts.

The trick, of course, is the Scenario 2 above - the system will have no way of knowing whether the different information in the import file is correct (an updated address because Matt has moved) or rubbish (a typo, or a rubbish phone number created due to a mandatory field on a competition entry, for instance). That's why I think these conflicts would need to be identified for some sort of manual operator-led review. IE, the CRM database is authoritative for information about the contacts - no automatic updates should be made that *change* existing data without human review and approval.

How this looks in practice, I have no idea - potentially a similar screen to Dynamic's native Import system, where you can clearly of the entire import, the list of people who have been updated successfully, the list of people who've been partially updated or augmented, the list of people that have conflicting data requiring manual review, and the list of unknown or failed people.