Understanding KPIs and Quality Score

Understanding KPIs and Quality Score

The Summary tab in Match Results displays several key performance indicators (KPIs) that quantify the effectiveness of your matching run. Understanding these metrics helps you evaluate whether your match definitions are capturing the right duplicates and whether your data quality is sufficient.

Total Records

This is the combined count of all records across every datasource included in the match. If you imported two files with 5,000 and 3,000 records respectively, Total Records shows 8,000. This number serves as the denominator for calculating match rate and helps you understand the scale of your matching job.

Match Pairs

The number of record pairs that the matching engine identified as potential duplicates. Each pair consists of two records (Record A and Record B) that scored above the matching threshold on at least one definition. A single record can appear in multiple pairs if it matches several other records.

Match Rate

The percentage of total records that are involved in at least one match pair. A match rate of 40% means that 40% of your records were flagged as part of a duplicate pair. The remaining 60% are unique records with no matches.

What constitutes a "good" match rate depends entirely on your data:

• High match rate (above 50%) — common when matching overlapping datasets or data with many duplicates
• Moderate match rate (20-50%) — typical for cross-system matching where some overlap exists
• Low match rate (below 20%) — may indicate clean data, overly strict definitions, or insufficient field coverage

Average Connections

The mean number of match links per matched record. If a record matches three other records, it has three connections. A high average suggests records are clustered into larger groups, while a low average (close to 1) means most matches are simple one-to-one pairs.

The Hero Gauge

The large semicircle gauge at the top of the Summary tab visualizes the overall match quality. It breaks down into three zones:

• High confidence (green) — a large proportion of matches have scores in the excellent or high bands
• Moderate confidence (amber) — a significant portion of matches fall in the mid-range, suggesting some pairs may need manual review
• Needs review (red) — many matches have low scores, indicating potential false positives or weak definitions

The gauge needle points to the overall matched percentage, combining the match rate with a quality weighting based on the score distribution.