When you connect multiple systems to HubSpot — ERP, e-commerce, licensing, and a legacy CRM — data chaos is almost guaranteed.
That’s exactly what happened to a Swedish SaaS company in the construction industry: thousands of duplicate companies, conflicting IDs, and outdated records slowed down sales, confused support teams, and inflated marketing data.
In this episode of How I Fixed Your Data, Jon, a HubSpot consultant with over 11 years of experience, explains how he used Koalify to clean and merge 18,000 duplicate records — turning fragmented systems into a single, reliable CRM.
🎥 Watch the full conversation with Jon:
The Industry Problem: Siloed Systems = Duplicate Chaos
The client is a Swedish SaaS company in the construction industry, co-owned by several large construction firms. Their purpose: to share knowledge, standards, and licensing information through a digital platform and regular in-person briefings.
Over the years, they built an ecosystem of in-house systems and integrations, including:
-
An ERP for billing and accounting
-
A custom-built licensing and user management platform
-
An e-commerce system for digital products
-
A legacy CRM called SuperOffice
-
Plus marketing tools, help desk, and analytics systems
When all these systems were connected to HubSpot Enterprise, every import and sync brought along duplicates.
The result:
-
Sales didn’t know which company to attach deals to.
-
Marketing sent duplicate emails to the same person.
-
Customer support handled the same organization multiple times under different records.
-
Reporting was unreliable — totals, ARR, and segmentation were all off.
As Jon describes: “We expected duplicates, but not on this scale. Once all the data landed in HubSpot, we realized how much overlap there really was.”
The Fix – From Enrichment to Automation
Before diving into merging, Jon’s team needed to trust the data.
Step 1: Enriching Company Data with UC (the Swedish Registry)
Sweden has a national company database called UC (Upplysningscentralen), similar to other business registries in Europe.
Jon’s team built an integration to automatically enrich companies in HubSpot using UC data:
-
Verified company name and registration number
-
Industry classification and company size
-
Turnover and employee count
This enrichment allowed them to identify true duplicates with confidence — even when domain names or email formats differed.
“We couldn’t rely on domain names because subsidiaries often shared the same domain. Once we had official company names and business IDs, we knew exactly what was a duplicate.”
Step 2: Smarter Deduplication with Koalify
HubSpot’s default deduplication tool wasn’t enough, it could only compare simple fields like email or company domain.
Koalify offered a more flexible and automated approach.
Duplicate rules:
-
Company Name
-
Organization Number (Business ID)
-
VAT Number
Primary record logic:
-
Prefer companies enriched with UC data
-
Prefer records originating from the old SuperOffice CRM (the cleanest dataset)
-
Prefer companies with more active subscriptions and deals
“Koalify let us merge based on real business logic, not just text matches. That made it safe to automate thousands of merges.”
Step 3: Handling HubSpot’s New Merge Behavior
When HubSpot updated how it handles merges (creating a new record instead of keeping the old one), it caused problems for systems connected via the API.
To solve this, Jon created a workflow-based workaround:
-
Mark the soon-to-be-deleted companies with a “Deleted = Yes” flag before merging.
-
Delay the merge by four hours to let other systems sync.
-
Perform the merge using Koalify’s workflow action.
-
Run a follow-up workflow that clears the deletion flag on the surviving record.
This ensured that external systems could safely identify which companies to keep or remove.
“It’s a bit of a hack, but it works beautifully. Now the external systems always know which company survived the merge.”
Step 4: Tackling Contact Duplicates
Company merges were straightforward — contact duplicates were trickier.
Swedish naming conventions (with many shared last names) made simple name-based matching risky.
The solution:
-
Match on First Name + Last Name + Company Name (synced from UC)
-
Exclude the largest enterprise clients from automated merges
-
Use manual review for uncertain duplicates
-
Add phone number logic when available
This hybrid approach balanced safety with efficiency.
Results for the Client
The results were immediate and measurable:
-
✅ 18,000 duplicate companies merged automatically
-
✅ 8,000 duplicate contacts cleaned up
-
✅ Unified data across ERP, e-commerce, and licensing systems
-
✅ Increased confidence in HubSpot reporting
-
✅ Sales, marketing, and support teams now work from one source of truth
“The sales team trusts HubSpot now. They no longer have to double-check everything in the ERP before taking action.”
Lessons Learned
1. Clean Early or Plan for Cleanup
If you can, clean up before importing into HubSpot.
If not, plan for a cleanup phase immediately after launch — with the right tools in place.
2. Use Enrichment to Identify True Duplicates
Official business registries like UC (Sweden), KBO (Belgium), or Handelsregister (Germany) can make duplicate detection far more accurate.
3. Don’t Fear Automation, Just Design It Well
Koalify’s rules and workflows allowed Jon to merge safely at scale without losing control.
4. Expect Merge-Sync Challenges
HubSpot’s merge behavior may create new record IDs; design workflows to keep external systems in sync.
“You can’t trust data until it’s unified, but once you do, HubSpot becomes an entirely different platform.”
FAQ
Q: Why not use HubSpot’s built-in deduplication?
A: It only compares limited fields (like email or domain). Koalify allows flexible, multi-field logic and automation.
Q: How did UC enrichment help with duplicates?
A: It ensured company names and registration numbers were accurate, creating reliable identifiers across systems.
Q: How did Jon handle HubSpot’s merge API issue?
A: By flagging records before merge and clearing them after sync — ensuring connected systems stayed aligned.
Q: What were the results after cleanup?
A: Over 18,000 company duplicates and 8,000 contact duplicates merged, improving reporting and team efficiency.