Work out which records are the same. Then keep one that everyone can trust.
Datum finds every version of a client, matter and person across your systems and decides which are the same. It keeps one governed record of each and holds how they connect. This page shows how, surface by surface.
Narrowed, weighed, grouped, and stopped when a group stops making sense.
Deciding that two records are the same client is the part a firm is right to be sceptical about. None of it is a black box: everything behind a decision is shown to the person who has to act on it.
Tidy the data before comparing it
Company suffixes, people's names, registration numbers, addresses and matter numbers are put into one consistent form first. You compare the companies, not two people's typing habits.
Weigh the evidence, do not guess
A rare name matching is strong evidence, a common one is weak, and a missing value counts for nothing. Every line of that reasoning is kept, so a reviewer reads why rather than trusting a score. The method is Fellegi–Sunter, the standard in record linkage.
Some differences count against a match
Company suffix, country, entity type and qualifiers in the name count strongly against a match when they disagree. That is how two companies in the same group stay two companies.
When a group stops making sense, Datum stops
Merges chain: A matches B, and B matches C. When the chain grows past what the evidence supports, Datum suspends it and flags it, rather than producing one record that is really three companies.
One record, built field by field, and it tells you so.
Choosing which value wins is where a system like this earns your trust or loses it. The rules are yours, written in plain terms, and a person can always overrule them.
Four kinds of claim, never mixed up
A value checked against Companies House, a value someone at the firm asserted, a value copied from one of your systems, and a value Datum worked out from a match are four different strengths of claim. They are coloured differently on every screen, because "these names look alike" is not "this company owns that one".
Merging, unmerging, and a record of both
Every decision is recorded with its reason, takes effect at once with a window to undo it, and survives a full re-run of the matching. Datum will not re-propose what a person has settled. Undoing a merge is a normal operation, not a support ticket.
Every relationship, held as data.
A record on its own answers little. The questions a firm actually asks are about groups, parties and people, and each of those is a dated link with a source.
Groups and hierarchies
The whole corporate structure is held so that every parent is one step away, which makes "what have we done for this group?" a fast question. You can model a restructure that has not happened yet, and any total respects the ethical wall.
Parties and matters
Who is on which matter, in which role, from when. Clients, counterparties and the other names they go by are one register, so a matter's parties are a list you read, not a search across systems.
People and roles
Who was assigned, at what rate, and where they are admitted to practise, each with the dates it applied from. "Who was on this matter in March?" is a question you ask, not an archaeology project.
Two clocks on every link
Every link carries two dates: when it was true, and when the firm recorded it. Ask what the firm knew on the day a matter opened and you get that answer, not today's answer applied backwards.
Data quality is a queue, not a report.
Everything Datum finds wrong, uncertain or unfinished becomes a piece of work with an owner, a reason and a deadline. Six queues, built the same way, so someone new can clear two hundred items with a one-page guide.
Match review
Possible duplicates waiting for a decision, with the evidence for and against each one added up line by line.
Suspended clusters
Where Datum stopped a merge growing past what the evidence supports.
Escalations
Raised by a reviewer, routed to the right person, with a deadline.
Data quality
Broken rules, ranked by seriousness and by record type.
Hierarchy
Suggested parent companies, and records that have none.
Drift
A source system that has started disagreeing with itself.
Rules your firm can write
Written in a simple expression language and checked as you type. Anything they catch arrives as work to do, not as a report nobody opens.
A workflow you can look at
Each queue's steps and the moves between them are drawn as a diagram. A mistake in the routing survives a review as prose; it does not survive being drawn.
Search that understands legal names
Ltd, Limited or LTD finds the same company. Permissions apply while the search runs, so nothing screened ever reaches the results.
Reference data and a classification the industry already uses.
Code lists, mappings between systems and the way work is classified are held as data rather than written into the software. A new version is a migration, not a rewrite.
The industry standard for classifying work
Datum uses SALI LMSS, the classification the legal industry has settled on, plus your firm's own additions and a mapping from however you classified work before.
Mappings between systems, held as data
How your practice management system's codes line up with the CRM's is a table your team can read and change, not a rule buried in a connector.
A queue for what did not fit
Anything an import cannot place lands with a person to clear, never in a silent default nobody sees.
The data model is a screen, not an appendix.
The first question every evaluation asks is what the data model looks like. Datum answers it from the product, drawn from the same source your own systems read. Because the model is data rather than code, your firm can add a field, watch it be validated, and publish it without waiting for a release.
The two things a firm gets wrong most expensively.
Where the cost of a bad record lands: in a report, a pitch, or a bill.
Matters
Matter numbering, the stages a matter passes through, and the checks it has to clear before it moves, recorded rather than remembered. A matter that skipped a check is visible as one months later.
People
Assignments, rates and admissions, each with the dates it applied from. The dates are the point.
Watch it run, start to finish.
One hour on the demonstration firm: the mess as we generated it, someone clearing the review queue on real evidence, the record it produces, and where it plugs into what you already run.
Questions before booking? Use the contact form.