System and method for linking contact records to company locations

• US 9,026,552 B2
• Filed: 08/30/2011
• Issued: 05/05/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 01/18/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Salesforce.com, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Salesforce.com, Inc.
• Inventors: Jagota, Arun Kumar
• Primary Examiner(s): Casanova, Jorge A
• Application Number:
  US13/221,684
• Publication Number:
  US 20120059853A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,344 Days
• Field of Search: 707/737, 707/740, 707/780
• US Class Current: 707/780
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/29 Geographical information databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/95 Retrieval from the web
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/944 Business related

Abstract

A database system and method for linking a received contact to a company location. The received contact includes an external address and identifies a company. The database includes a set of multiple locations for the company. The external address is compared to the addresses stored in the database for the different company locations. If a match is found, the contact is tethered to the location with matching address. If no match is found, a new location is created and added to the set of locations for the company.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of linking a contact to one of a plurality of company addresses stored in a database system, the method comprising:

receiving contact data for an individual, the contact data including the individual'"'"'s name, a company name and a company address;

determining whether the company address in the received contact data matches one of the plurality of company addresses stored in the database system in association with the company name;

linking, using a processor, the individual'"'"'s name to the matching company address stored in the database system; and

storing the company address of the received contact data as a new company address for the company name in the database system when the company address of the received contact data does not match one of the plurality of company addresses stored in the database system in association with the company name, and linking the individual'"'"'s name to the new company address in the database system.

2. The method of claim 1, the determining step further comprising using one or more fuzzy matching techniques by comparing the address in the received contact data with each company address in the database.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein each comparison yields a score corresponding to each address pair, each address pair comprising the address in the received contact data and a company address from the database.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the step of comparing the address in the received contact data with each company address in the database comprises:

comparing each address field of the address in the received contact data with each address field of each company address to obtain a first set of field match scores using a learned knowledge table;

comparing each address field of the address in the received contact data with each address field of each company address to obtain a second set of field match scores using a matching logic; and

determining a third set of field match scores by obtaining the higher score for each field between the first and second sets of field match scores, wherein the address in the received contact data is determined to match one of the plurality of company addresses when an overall address match score exceeds a threshold value, the overall address match score determined based at least in part on the third set of field match scores.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the address in the received contact data comprises a plurality of address fields, each address field representing at least one of a street, a city, a state, a zip code, and a country.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining whether the address in the received contact data is verified by a third party vendor that provides address validation services.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining whether the address in the received contact data is validated, wherein the contact is capable of being linked to the one of the company addresses when the address in the received contact data is validated.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the address in the received contact data is either partial or complete.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the database system is a multi-tenant database system integrating the received address data into the database system.

10. A system for matching address data in a database system, the system comprising:

one or more processors; and

a non-transitory computer readable medium storing a plurality of instructions, which when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to;

receive contact data for an individual, the contact data including the individual'"'"'s name, a company name and a company address;

determine whether the company address in the received contact data matches one of the plurality of company addresses stored in the database system in association with the company name;

link the individual'"'"'s name to the matching company address stored in the database system; and

store the company address of the received contact data as a new company address for the company name in the database system when the company address of the received contact data does not match one of the plurality of company addresses stored in the database system in association with the company name, and linking the individual'"'"'s name to the new company address in the database system.

11. The system of claim 10, the instructions further comprising:

determine whether the address in the received contact data is validated, wherein the individual'"'"'s name is linked to a specific company address when the address in the received contact data is validated and matches the specific company address.

12. The system of claim 10, wherein the plurality instructions, when executed further cause the one or more processors to:

determine whether the address in the received contact data is validated;

determine a nearest address in the plurality of company addresses to the address in the received contact data; and

link the individual to a specific company address when the address in the received contact data matches the specific company address.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the instructions to determine the nearest address in the plurality of company addresses to the address in the received contact data comprises:

instructions to determine a distance between the address in the received contact data and each company address in the database system.

14. The system of claim 10, wherein each company address comprises a plurality of address fields, and the instructions to determine a nearest location further causes the processor to use one or more fuzzy matching algorithms by to compare each address field of the address in the received contact data with each address field of the company addresses to obtain a field match score for an address pair comprising the address in the received contact data and the company address.

15. A non-transitory computer-readable medium containing one or more sequences of instructions executable by a processor in a computer to match address data in a database system, the instructions, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:

receive contact data for an individual, the contact data including the individual'"'"'s name, a company name and a company address;

determine whether the company address in the received contact data matches one of the plurality of company addresses stored in the database system in association with the company name;

link the individual'"'"'s name to the matching company address; and

store the company address of the received contact data as a new company address for the company name in the database system when the company address of the received contact data does not match one of the plurality of company addresses stored in the database system in association with the company name, and linking the individual'"'"'s name to the new company address in the database system.

16. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein each company address comprises a plurality of address fields, and the instructions, when executed by the processor, further causes the processor to use one or more fuzzy matching techniques to determine a weighted confidence score for at least one of a portion of the plurality of address fields, the weighted confidence score determined based on a frequency that the portion of the plurality of address fields has appeared in training sets.

17. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15, further including instructions to:

determine whether the company address in the received contact data is validated by a third party address validation service; and

receive validated address data from the third party address validation service when the company address in the received contact data is validated, wherein whether the company address in the received contact data matches one of the plurality of company addresses in the database system is determined using the validated address data.

18. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 17, wherein the company address in the received contact data comprises a plurality of external address fields and the validated address data comprises a plurality of normalized address fields, the computer-readable medium further including instructions to:

compare each external address field with a corresponding normalized address field;

determine that the external address in the received contact data and the validated address is a training set pair when at least a portion of an external address field and a corresponding portion of a normalized address field are not expressed in a same way;

determine a set of alias pairs from the training set pair, the set of alias pairs determined based on the portion of the external address field and its corresponding portion of the normalized address field; and

store the set of alias pairs in a learned knowledge table.

19. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the company address in the received contact data comprises a plurality of external address fields, wherein the instructions to determine comprises instructions to:

calculate a plurality of field match scores for the company address in the received contact data and the one of the plurality of company addresses using learned knowledge; and

calculate a record-level match score for the company address in the received contact data using the calculated field match scores, wherein the record-level match score indicates a weighted match score between the two addresses.