What does this change in practice?

Duplication is not a typing error: it is a consequence of multiple entry points. While the door stays open, cleaning is recurring — which is why deduplicating without governing registration is painting over damp.

Can deduplication be automated?

Partly. The system proposes pairs ranked by likelihood; confirming the ambiguous cases is human, because the cost of a wrong merge is high and asymmetric.

What about transactions pointing at the duplicate?

They keep pointing at the surviving record, and the absorbed record history stays accessible. Deleting the old one without redirecting breaks reports and audits.

Glossário

Deduplication

Deduplication is the process of recognising that two or more records describe the same entity and deciding what to do with them: merge, cross-reference, or mark as distinct. The hard part is not deleting a duplicate — it is proving that two similar records are in fact the same one.

See the glossary Golden record

In practice

What this changes in your master data

Similarity is not identity

Two materials with similar descriptions may be different gauges. A rule that merges on textual similarity alone creates a worse error than the original.

The decision needs a trail

Who merged, on what basis, and when. Without it the merge is irreversible in practice, even if the database allows undoing.

Entry is where it gets solved

Detecting a duplicate at registration costs a fraction of detecting it later, when transactions already point at both.

Questions

Frequently asked questions about this term

Keep going

Related terms

Golden record · Master data · MDM (Master Data Management)

See data remediation

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