Customers Matched with Vendors
Table of Contents
Use Case:
Organizations need visibility into customers that also have a business relationship as vendors, as these dual-role entities can present elevated conflict of interest and third-party risk. When the same company is both buying from and selling to an organization, it can become more difficult to distinguish legitimate business activity from transactions that warrant additional scrutiny. For example, a distributor that also provides consulting services as a vendor may participate in both customer revenue and vendor payment transactions, making it important to monitor the relationship for potential compliance concerns.
The Customers Matched with Vendors analytic identifies customers that are also associated with a company vendor using both exact and fuzzy matching techniques. Matches are detected using formal identifiers, such as customer or vendor IDs and bank account numbers, as well as similarities between customer and vendor names and addresses. Each potential match is assigned a confidence score between 0 and 100, with exact identifier matches receiving the highest confidence score. By highlighting customers that also exist as vendors, organizations can strengthen third-party due diligence, improve transparency into complex business relationships, and identify potential conflicts of interest or unusual transaction patterns for further review.
| Description | Identifies customers that are also associated with a company vendor through either exact matching of formal identifiers (such as IDs or bank account numbers) or fuzzy matching of customer and vendor names and addresses. |
| Domain(s) | Customer Revenue |
| Analysis Type | Indicator |
| Focus Area | COI |
| Score Methodology | Match confidence score (0 to 100). Matches using formal identifiers are assigned a score of 100, while fuzzy matches are scored based on confidence. |
Default Scoring Criteria
Importance: 3 (default)
Enabled: True (default)
| Risk Result | Default Value | Notation |
|---|---|---|
| Weak | 90 | Match Score |
| Moderate | 95 | |
| Strong | 98 | |
| Auto | Not Set |
Unique Configuration
The Customers Matched with Vendors analytic compares customer and vendor records using multiple matching techniques to identify potential relationships between the two.
By default, the analytic performs the following checks:
- Basic Name Match: compares the primary customer and vendor names.
- Extended Name Match: compares primary and secondary customer and vendor names.
- Address Match: compares the customer and vendor addresses.
- Name and Address Match: compares customer and vendor names together with their addresses to improve match confidence.
- Phone Number Match: compares customer and vendor phone numbers within the same country.
- Formal ID Match: identifies records where a customer references a vendor ID, or a vendor references a customer ID.
- External ID Match: compares external identifiers shared between customer and vendor records.
- Bank Account Match: identifies customers and vendors that share the same bank account number and bank country.
To improve match quality and reduce false positives, the analytic standardizes values (such as removing punctuation and formatting differences) before performing comparisons and applies preliminary validation checks prior to calculating a match score.
Exclusions
- Exclude from consideration any customer-vendor match where there is a match with the “Formal ID Cross-Check”.
- A minimum match score of 80 is required.
- Vendors that are intercompany are excluded from comparison.