A common use case for record merging is matching or comparing the data from multiple different business systems. Let’s say System A and System B, your marketing and sales systems. In this example, let’s assume that each system contains some of the “same” data, and some unique data. What starts as one of many initial contacts (and perhaps companies, addresses, phone number, etc.) in the marketing system, convert to one of many other contacts and much more information in the sales/CRM system, with many changes to the information over time, later converting to product and billing information in other systems requiring more changes to the “same” data.