A one-off cleanup buys you about four months. We do the cleanup and then close the doors it came in through: form validation, import standards, dedupe automation and ownership rules.
In short
Effective CRM data cleanup runs in four steps: profile the data to quantify duplicates and gaps, agree merge and normalisation rules with the business, execute in reversible batches, then install prevention — validation, deduplication automation and import standards. Capra Digitals resolved over 20,000 duplicate records in a single engagement using this sequence.
Signals
Counts are inflated by duplicates, so every number gets mentally discounted in the meeting.
The same person receives the same campaign three times under three records.
You are paying to keep dead and unmarketable contacts in the marketable pool.
Workflows depend on fields that are empty or formatted five different ways.
What you get
We quantify the problem first: duplicate clusters, fill rates, invalid formats, dead domains and orphaned associations.
ExploreMerge rules agreed with you — which record wins, which field survives — then executed in reversible batches.
ExploreConsistent country, industry, job title and phone formats, plus enrichment where a trusted source exists.
ExploreForm validation, import checklists, dedupe automation and clear ownership so the same mess cannot rebuild itself.
ExploreHow it runs
A quantified picture of the data, so the scale of the problem is a number rather than a feeling.
Merge and survivorship rules signed off before anything is changed. This is a business decision, not a technical one.
Reversible batches with spot checks between them. Nothing runs against the full database on the first pass.
Validation, automation and standards, plus a data health dashboard so drift is visible early.
Track record
Duplicates resolved
20k
In a single engagement
Records processed
70k+
Largest cleanup and migration
Reversible batches
100%
Nothing merged without a checkpoint
Health reporting
Monthly
So drift is caught early
Questions
The questions we get asked on almost every call about this work.
Yes, with agreed survivorship rules and batched execution. We spot-check between batches and keep the pre-merge state recoverable until you sign off.
Usually archive rather than delete: remove them from the marketable pool to control cost while keeping the history. Hard deletion is reserved for genuine junk and legal requests.
It can, by reducing marketing contact counts. Whether it does depends on how your contacts are currently classified — that is one of the first things we measure.
Two to five weeks for most portals: about a week to profile and agree rules, the rest to execute in batches and install prevention.
Prevention is part of the engagement, not an upsell: validation on forms, standards for imports, automated duplicate detection and a monthly health dashboard.
Next step
We can profile the portal quickly and tell you how big the problem actually is, which is usually different from what people expect.