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AO Business Name-Only Match

Overview

Advanced Object (AO) Business Name-Only Match identifies matches by using the business name only without address components (for example, looking for all franchisees within a state or nationwide). In this process, the object will parse Business Names into discrete components and look for matching values across the components. AO Business Name-Only Match affords a high degree of control over the matching process, with numerous parameters that can be adjusted to improve match quality. The default settings in the configuration dialog represent best business practices and provide a very good starting point.

AO Business Name-Only Match accepts a single stream as input and produces a single output with the Firm Group value added.

If the input stream contains multiple data sources, at least one of the sources must have an internal dedupe flag set to "Y".

AO Business Name-Only Match configuration parameters

AO Business Name-Only Match has four sets of configuration parameters in addition to the standard execution options: Input, Match, Options, and Table.

AO Business Name-Only Match: Input tab

Match fields

Parameter

Description

Business name

(Required) Company name used for matching.

  • Default: blank

Business name 2

(Optional) Alternate company name that can also be used for cross-field matching (for example, Lotus & IBM). Allows for different companies to be matched to either field.

  • Default: blank

Business keyword

(Optional) Firm keyword that is matched using a separate score. This should be used in conjunction with a separate parsing step that separates the significant parts of a business name from "common" parts. For example, suppose that you have the following business names:

FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF MIAMI

1ST NATL BANK MIAMI

FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF ORLANDO

BANK OF MIAMI

The key words here are “MIAMI” and “ORLANDO”. Using upstream regular expressions and the text parsing tools, you can create a separate KEYWORD field that contains the distinguishing parts of a business name, and specify this field as the Business keyword.

If you specify this field, also configure the Business keyword matching score on the Match tab.

  • Default: blank

Unique record ID

Parameter

Description

Record ID

(Optional) Field containing the unique record ID.

  • Default: blank

AO Business Name-Only Match: Match tab

Business matching

Parameter

Description

Business score

Match threshold for business name field after any optional business adjustments (described below) are taking into account.

  • Default: Tight (88)

Match nicknames

Allows for personal names in a firm to be standardized. For example, in Liz Smith Enterprises versus Elizabeth Smith Enterprises, Liz and Elizabeth would be treated as identical.

  • Default: no

Match initials

If selected, enables Initials match option.

  • Default: no

Initials

Recover match points if Initial matches a name (for example, J Robin Smith Inc versus Jonathon Robert Smith, Inc).

  • Default: Treat as Similar (75)

Match abbreviations

If selected, enables Abbreviations match option.

  • Default: no

Abbreviations

Recover match points due to an abbreviation identified by pattern rather than known value (for example, Halbert Construction Contractors versus Hlbrt Construction Contractors).

  • Default: Treat as Similar (75)

Match acronyms

If selected, enables Acronyms match option.

  • Default: no

Acronyms

Assign acronym matches a specific score for their part of the match (for example, International Machine Parts versus IMP).

  • Default: Treat as Similar (75)

Missing words

Recover match points due to missing or disjoint words (for example, Halston Construction Contractors versus Halston Contractors).

  • Default: Treat as Similar (75)

Strip vowels if > N bytes

If selected, allows for fewer comparisons on large firm words by eliminating the vowels and comparing only the vowels within the word.

  • Default: 7

Business keyword matching

Parameter

Description

Keyword score

Match threshold for business keyword field after optional business Keyword adjustments (described below) are taken into account.

  • Default: blank

Match blank keyword

Specifies method for matching blank business keyword input field. Options are:

  • Blanks Never Match: if either or both records have blank field, they will not match.

  • Blank vs. Blank Only: if both records have blank field, they will match. If only one is blank, they will not match.

  • Blank vs. Non Blank Only: if only one record has blank field, they will match. If both have blank field, they will not match.

  • Both One Blank and Both Blanks Match: matches either case; one or both records with a blank field for Business keyword.

The default is Blank vs. Blank Only.

Match abbreviations

Allows for variations in the business keyword field (for example, MISS vs. MISSISSIPPI to be considered an exact match as a case of abbreviation).

  • Default: no

Segmentation

Parameter

Description

Business letters

Allows for segmentation of data based on the first X characters of the business name. This option allows for better performance; however it may reduce the number of potential matches.

  • Default: 0

Max segment size

Maximum number of records compared in a single comparison group. The default setting allows for nearly-unlimited segment size. If you want to limit segment size to avoid runaway computation, potentially at the expense of missing a few record matches, set this to a lower value like 1000. Typically you can reduce this value unless you are matching within a very large segment like STATE.

  • Default: 99999

Custom segment

(Optional) If segmentation other than above is desired, select the field containing the segment key.

  • Default: blank

AO Business Name-Only Match: Options tab

Reporting

Parameter

Description

Output match score

If selected, outputs the overall score from the match records as a percentage between 1—100.

  • Default: no

Source control

Parameter

Description

Source

Field containing the logical description for input data source. This is usually defined in AO Define Source.

  • Default: blank

Internal dedupe flag

Field containing a Y/N flag indicating whether or not data from a particular source should be compared against itself (deduped) or solely against other sources. As a general rule, master databases are not internally deduped whereas update files are.

  • Default: blank

Compare sources not internally deduped

If a matching process has more than one source with the internal dedupe field set to "N", selecting this will compare the two sources.

  • Default: yes

Parallel processing

Parameter

Description

Parallelism level

Set to the lesser of the number of CPU cores on the Execution Server, or the number of threads configured in the project in which the macro is embedded.

  • Default: 1

Optimize for large segments

If you receive warnings like "Window Compare segment size for value (06828EAS3135) has exceeded 2000," enable this option. Comparing large candidate groups may reduce matching efficiency. Selecting this option increases the number of records that can be sent to a matching process without slowing processing.

  • Default: no

AO Business Name-Only Match: Table tab

Parameter

Description

Business alias table

Path and name of optional DLD table used to augment or override the alias values defined within the macro. The table must be of the form below.

ALIAS

STANDARD

REMOVE

Paving

Asphalt

FALSE

Hotmix

Asphalt

Reproduction

Copying

Copying

Where ALIAS and STANDARD are Text fields and REMOVE is Boolean. In the example above, Paving and Hotmix are defined as new aliases for Asphalt (a blank REMOVE field is treated as FALSE), while the TRUE value in the REMOVE field explicitly suppresses Reproduction as an alias for Copying.

  • Default: blank

Business noise table

Path and name of optional DLD table used to add additional "noise" words for Firm matching. The table must be a single-column DLD table of the form below.

WORDS

Corporation

Inc

Company

Where WORDS is a Text field. The example above shows data that shouldn’t contribute to the match score because it is contextually meaningless. If you are matching financial institutions, word BANK could be a "noise" word.

  • Default: blank

Configure AO Business Name-Only Match

  1. Select AO Business Name-Only Match.

  2. Go to the Input tab on the Properties pane.

  3. Select the input fields.

  4. To specify alternate input fields, you may optionally go to the Input2 tab.

  5. Go to the Match tab to edit matching options.

  6. Go to the Options tab to configure reporting, source control, and parallel processing options.

  7. Optionally, go to the Table tab to specify alias and noise reference tables.

  8. Optionally, go to the Execution tab, and then set Web service options.

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