Hi again Robert,
With SFDC, the easiest method is an SFDC trigger. The typical matching info will be email domain or email domain + country (depending on your sales org.)
email domain has the great advantage over account name that one cannot temper its spelling. You have to write it correctly or you will not receive the emails. The second advantage is that it is unique on a WW basis.
You will need to fields :
- One "Account" field on lead, type = lookup (account).
- One "email domain" string field on the account object.
The trigger will detect a new lead or a lead update when the lead has no account and will try to find a match between the lead email domain and the account which Email Domain field (exact match) and, if a match is done, will fill the lead "Account" field. Once the matching is done, you will use some workflows on the lead to populate the lead fields from the account field.
In order to populate the account Email domain field, you can start manually or with an import. It you think worth it, you could create another trigger that looks into account contact and determines the email domain, although this has some risks.
The last stage of the whole process will be to replace SFDC default lead conversion assistant with a wizard that leverage the lead account info to make sure that, when converted, the resulting contact does not end up in another account.
-Greg
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