Each month, Restaurantology inserts thousands of RestaurantologyLogs—comprised of firmographic, technographic, territory, and trend insights—intended to snapshot a moment in time for each Concept and Company managed via our proprietary technology. These Logs will help track crucial updates in the industry, such as changes in verified unit counts or the discovery of new software fingerprints.

Why is this important?

Restaurantology can be used to drive both data integrity and automation, such as automated field updates via Salesforce triggers and subsequent workflows, that help keep your database clean without manual data entry. To do so, you should strive to match all RestaurantologyLogs to a corresponding Salesforce Account in a 1:1 fashion.

A bit of background information

Before each RestaurantologyLog is inserted during the monthly snapshot sync, the RestaurantologyLog > Restaurantology Internal ID is used to search for the Salesforce Account with the same value, and then automatically assigns the RestaurantologyLog > Account with the proper Account ID. For this to happen, the Restaurantology Internal ID must be found on a Salesforce Account record.

There are 2 possible results during the insert process:

1. The Restaurantology Internal ID is found on an Account and, thus, the RestaurantologyLog is inserted with a related Account, or
2. The Restaurantology Internal ID is not found on an Account. The RestaurantologyLog is inserted without a related Account.

In instances where no Account is found and matched, you’ll want to work to resolve by either [1] matching the RestaurantologyLog to an existing Account, or [2] creating a new Account that is associated with its corresponding RestaurantologyLog(s).

2 METHODOLOGIES FOR MAPPING RESTAURANTOLOGY RECORDS

There are a variety of ways to map RestaurantologyLog records to existing Salesforce Accounts, however not all methods are created equal. Before you begin your mapping exercise, it’s important to understand the difference between each method, as well as when each should be prioritized given the records in question and Salesforce circumstance.

Data mapping can be collectively grouped into:

1. Mass mapping: Data Matching Helper and Scan and Map Data
2. Manual mapping: updating Account > Restaurantology Internal ID by hand, or via one-time import.

In the next few articles we’ll introduce each concept, making sure to provide heavy-handed recommendations that emphasize at-scale mappings whenever possible.