SAP Migration · 6 min read · October 2025
How to deduplicate SAP customer, vendor, and material data safely
By Thinklytics Partners, SAP S/4HANA Practice
Deduplicating SAP master data means finding the same record entered multiple ways and merging it against agreed rules, with audit trails. Do it before migration.
Topics covered
- Deduplication
- Master Data
- Data Quality
- S/4HANA
Frequently asked questions
What is master data deduplication in SAP?
Finding the same customer, vendor, or material entered multiple ways and merging the records against agreed rules, so the data migrates clean instead of carrying duplicates forward.
Why do duplicates matter so much?
They inflate counts, break reconciliation, and migrate as separate records unless stopped. They are the most common master data defect and the most damaging at cutover.
How do you deduplicate safely?
Profile duplication by object, agree matching and survivorship rules with the data owners, use deterministic and fuzzy matching, review edge cases, and keep a full audit trail.
Who decides which duplicate record wins?
The business owners, through agreed survivorship rules. Nothing merges without a defensible rule behind it, and every change is logged.
Should we deduplicate before or after migration?
Before. Doing it before is routine and low-risk. Doing it after means remediation in a live production system, which is far more expensive.
How does dedup connect to the migration?
The deduplication decisions become documented transformation rules the migration reuses, so cleanup and the move stay aligned.