Duplicate identities hiding in tens of millions of records
A large, distributed organization maintained tens of millions of person and entity records, accumulated across many independent operating units with no shared identity key between them. The same individual surfaced again and again—under inconsistent spellings, transposed names, differing documents, and partial records. Duplicate identities quietly inflated counts, distorted operational metrics, and created compliance and cost exposure.
Naive exact-key matching missed the vast majority of real overlaps, while purely manual review could not keep pace with the volume—or provide an auditable trail of who decided what and why. The organization needed near-real-time visibility into record changes, probabilistic matching that ranks likely duplicates by confidence, and a governed way for experts to adjudicate—all while keeping its systems of record authoritative and its sensitive data protected.
