Tier 4 · ODS & Parties
The Operational Data Store (ODS) is where party data quietly decays: the same organisation recorded four times under four spellings, connections pointing at records that no longer exist, external references that cannot be tied back to the practice-management system, and organisations that have sat on both sides of the firm's work. Each of those defects surfaces later as a mis-addressed letter, an unreliable report, or a conflict check that misses a party. This audit finds them first, conservatively, and puts every proposed fix in front of a human.
Organisation records are grouped by company reference number, so case, punctuation, and suffix variants (Pty / Proprietary / Limited) of the same entity land in one review group. The guardrail is deliberate: identically named organisations with different reference numbers are rejected as distinct legal entities, and nothing is ever merged automatically.
Orphaned edges: connections still pointing at party records that no longer exist. Every orphaned edge is a matter whose party picture is quietly incomplete, which means reports and conflict searches built on the graph are incomplete too.
ODS external references reconciled against the practice-management system (PMS). We look for synthetic references (placeholder values that were never replaced) and non-unique references (one PMS number shared by several ODS records), both of which break the round trip between your matter system and the system your finance team trusts.
Parties flagged inactive yet still connected to open matters. An inactive flag on a live participant means correspondence, reporting, and screening can all silently skip a party who is still in the matter.
Organisations appearing in acting roles (client, insurer, defendant) on some matters and opposing roles (plaintiff, third party) on others, ranked by the smaller side so the list starts with the candidates most worth a conflict reviewer's time. These are screening candidates for your conflicts process, never conflict determinations.
Entity-resolution and graph lenses run over ODS parties and connections on an on-premise stack (client and third-party personal data, so this tier carries the full authority gate and a controlled environment only). Duplicate grouping keys on the company reference number rather than name similarity, which is what makes the no-auto-merge guardrail enforceable; both-sides candidates are derived from the connection graph's role assignments. Every group, rejection, and screening candidate is listed record by record in the report.
Across 30,351 organisation records, 333 duplicate groups carried 664 redundant records. The guardrail refused 380 look-alike name groups that shared a spelling but not a company reference number, and the connection graph surfaced 1,305 organisations that have acted on both sides.
One legal entity, one proposed merge, listed record by record for a human to confirm.
| Recorded name | Company reference |
|---|---|
| Bluegum Agribusiness Pty. Ltd. | 51483824 |
| Bluegum Agribusiness Pty Limited | 33942778 |
The names match to the eye; the company reference numbers do not. Two distinct legal entities, deliberately left unmerged.
A party register your letters, reports, and conflict checks can rely on: duplicates grouped for one-pass review with no dangerous auto-merges, external references that reconcile to your practice-management system, orphaned and inactive-party defects listed for cleanup, and a ranked both-sides screening list your conflicts team can clear.
