Understanding the Ultimate Parent Analysis

Understand how Delpha identifies and matches Ultimate Parents using AI-driven analysis and scoring logic. This page details each step, from confidence calculation to final Score Meter results.

Overview

The Ultimate Parent process in Delpha consists of two main steps:

1. Identification — Delpha's AI Agent determines the Ultimate Parent of a given account using insights from its trusted sources. This runs on Delpha's side.

2. Matching — Delpha searches within your Salesforce org to find the existing account that best matches this Ultimate Parent. This runs inside Salesforce, on your data, which never leaves your org.

The result of this process is what you see in the Score Meter on the record page.

Note: Each account is analysed on its own. Salesforce sends the identity of a single record (name, website, country) to the AI Agent and receives the analysis of that record back. You can therefore run the Ultimate Parent use case on one record, on a selection, or on your whole database — the mechanics are the same.

The technical output of the analysis

The analysis writes to several fields on the Account. The two that carry the full story are:

• D Ultimate Data (delpha__DDQ_QualityUltimateRecommendedData__c) — the complete technical output, in JSON.

• D Ultimate Parent Comments (delpha__DDQ_QualityUltimateComments__c) — the human-readable explanation of the recommendation (or the error message when the record could not be assessed).

The JSON in D Ultimate Data is divided into two sections:

• Common (common): the raw analysis returned by the Delpha AI-Agent — who the Ultimate Parent is, why, and the evidence behind it.

• Recommendations (recommendations): the ranked list of accounts found in your org that match that Ultimate Parent, each with its own matching score.

Example:

{
  "recommendations": [
    {
      "account_id": "001fo000009a6rSAAQ",
      "account_name": "Salesforce",
      "score": 100,
      "status": "Potential",
      "sources": [
        { "source": "Assessment", "score": 100, "timestamp": "2026-06-06 01:36:47" }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "common": {
    "id": "001cb00000rFWxfAAG",
    "subsidiary_commercial_name": "Heroku",
    "ultimate_parent_legal_name": "Salesforce, Inc.",
    "ultimate_parent_commercial_name": "Salesforce",
    "ultimate_parent_website": "https://www.salesforce.com/",
    "ultimate_parent_country": "US",
    "relationship_type": "Wholly Owned",
    "confidence": 1.0,
    "comment": "Heroku was acquired by Salesforce in 2010. Salesforce is a widely held public company.",
    "evidence_summary": "Identity: Heroku verified | Chain: Heroku -> Salesforce, Inc. | Protocol: Protocol 9 (Active Conglomerate) | Discard Check: None | GTM Selection: Salesforce is the active operating conglomerate that wholly owns Heroku.",
    "source_url": "https://investor.salesforce.com/",
    "ultimate_parent_source_level": "Securities Filing",
    "is_self_ultimate": false,
    "ownership_chain": "[{\"entity_legal_name\": \"Heroku, Inc.\", \"entity_website\": \"https://www.heroku.com/\", \"is_discarded\": false, \"is_ultimate_financial_parent\": false, \"comment\": \"Target entity, wholly owned subsidiary of Salesforce.\"}, {\"entity_legal_name\": \"Salesforce, Inc.\", \"entity_website\": \"https://www.salesforce.com/\", \"is_discarded\": false, \"is_ultimate_financial_parent\": true, \"comment\": \"Ultimate financial and commercial parent; widely held public company.\"}]",
    "lei_data": "{\"lei_number\": \"RCGZFPDMRW58VJ54VR07\", \"legal_name\": \"SALESFORCE, INC.\", \"legal_jurisdiction\": \"US-DE\", \"lei_source\": \"https://search.gleif.org/#/record/RCGZFPDMRW58VJ54VR07\"}"
  }
}

Step 1 — Identify the Ultimate (Reference)

Determine the real-world ultimate parent entity for the account, independent of what exists in your CRM.

The common section is the Ultimate Parent identified by the Delpha AI-Agent from its trusted sources. The agent receives only the account's name, website and country, and returns:

Key	Meaning
ultimate_parent_legal_name	Registered legal name of the Ultimate Parent (e.g. Salesforce, Inc.)
ultimate_parent_commercial_name	Name the parent goes to market with (e.g. Salesforce)
ultimate_parent_website	Official website of the Ultimate Parent
ultimate_parent_country	Country of the Ultimate Parent
confidence	How certain the agent is, from 0.0 to 1.0
relationship_type	Wholly Owned, Member Firm/Franchise, Portfolio Company, Brand/Division, Joint Venture, Independent
comment	Plain-language explanation of the relationship
evidence_summary	Condensed audit trail: identity check, chain, protocol applied, discard check, final selection
source_url / ultimate_parent_source_level	Where the conclusion comes from, and how authoritative it is (e.g. Securities Filing, Company Website)
ownership_chain	Every entity examined between the account and the top of the group
is_self_ultimate	true when the account is its own Ultimate Parent
lei_data	The Legal Entity Identifier record of the Ultimate Parent, when one exists (GLEIF)

In the example above, Delpha recommends Salesforce, Inc. (website https://www.salesforce.com/) as the Ultimate Parent of Heroku, with a confidence of 1.0 (100%).

The ownership chain

ownership_chain lists every entity the agent walked through, from the account itself up to the top of the group. Each link carries its own name, website, country, LEI and a short comment, plus two flags that matter:

• is_ultimate_financial_parent — this entity is the top of the financial ownership group (which is not always the entity Delpha recommends for go-to-market purposes).

• is_discarded — the agent considered this entity as a possible Ultimate Parent and deliberately rejected it. Discarded parents are used later to explain why your current value may be defensible even though it is not the recommendation (see Accuracy and consistency).

Note: Delpha's Ultimate Parent model reflects how companies operate and present themselves in the market — not how they're legally registered. By focusing on brand and operating structure, Delpha captures real commercial relationships and group affiliations relevant to sales, marketing, and territory management. This is especially useful for franchise and multi-brand organizations.

Step 2 — Link to Parent in CRM (Match)

Find and link the best-matching record in your CRM that represents that reference parent (names may differ; matching relies on evidence).

This step runs entirely inside your Salesforce org, using Delpha's AccountMatcher library. Delpha never receives your account list; only the record being assessed is ever sent out.

The result is the recommendations array — the ranked shortlist of your own accounts:

"recommendations": [
  {
    "account_id": "001fo000009a6rSAAQ",
    "account_name": "Salesforce",
    "score": 100,
    "status": "Potential"
  }
]

The best recommendation (the first one) is the one surfaced in the Score Meter, and its score becomes the confidence you see on the record.

How Matching Works

Candidate Shortlist

Delpha searches your org for accounts that could be the Ultimate Parent:

• When the recommended parent has a website, the shortlist is every account sharing its root domain (up to 200, the largest hierarchies first).

• When it has no website, Delpha falls back to a name search on Account (up to 1 000 suggestions).

The search is run twice — once with the parent's legal name, once with its commercial name — and the two result lists are merged, best-first, keeping up to 5 distinct accounts.

Support Fields

Two data quality fields are used to evaluate each candidate:

• Account.DDQ_QualityWebsiteDomain__c (D Website Domain) — the root domain of the account website.

• Account.DDQ_QualityAccountHierarchyCount__c (D Hierarchy Count) — number of accounts in the hierarchy (Account.ParentId).

Scoring

Each candidate is scored on three criteria, each with its own weight:

Criterion	Field	How it is scored	Weight
Name similarity	Name	Fuzzy comparison against the recommended name: 1 − distance / length	5
Domain match	D Website Domain	1 when it equals the recommended root domain, 0 otherwise — mandatory when a website is known	3
Hierarchy position	D Hierarchy Count	Log-scaled ratio against the largest hierarchy in the shortlist — rewards accounts that sit higher in the tree, with diminishing returns	10

The Matching Score is the weighted average of the three, as a percentage:

Matching Score = ( Σ score × weight ) / ( Σ weight ) × 100

Additional criteria can be configured per org (Ultimate Settings → Account Mapping Extra Conditions) — for example, requiring the country to match. They are appended to the three above and take part in the same weighted average.

Selection Criteria

• Candidates scoring below 60 are discarded.

• The remaining candidates are ranked by score; the highest Matching Score wins.

• Up to 5 recommendations are kept, so a steward can pick a different one.

• If no candidate qualifies, Delpha recommends creating a new Ultimate Parent — the recommendation carries the parent's name with no account Id, and the account is created (with its website) when the recommendation is accepted.

---

Final Confidence Score

The confidence displayed in Salesforce, and stored in D Ultimate Recommended Score (delpha__DDQ_QualityUltimateRecommendedScore__c), is:

Situation	Final score
A matching account was found in your org	the Matching Score of the best candidate (0–100)
No account qualified — a new Ultimate Parent is proposed	the agent's own confidence × 100

Recommendation: Since Ultimate matching relies on the support fields mentioned above, running a Data Quality Assessment before launching an Ultimate Parent analysis is highly recommended for better results.

Self-Ultimate: when the account is its own parent

When the agent concludes the account has no parent (is_self_ultimate: true), Delpha does not search your org straight away. It first checks two things:

1. The identified entity has no Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) — an entity with a registered LEI is matched normally, like any other.

2. The account's current Ultimate Parent and the recommended parent share the same root domain.

When both hold, the recommendation stays on the current Ultimate Parent (which, for a record with no parent, is the record itself) with a score of 100.

In every other case — an LEI is present, a website is missing, or the domains differ — the shortcut does not apply and the record goes through the standard org match described above.

Accuracy and consistency

Beyond the recommendation itself, the analysis feeds the Ultimate Parent quality dimensions shown in the Score Meter:

Situation	Accuracy	Consistency
The current Ultimate Parent is the top recommendation	OK	✅
The current Ultimate Parent is not the recommendation, but matches an entity the agent discarded (is_discarded: true)	OK	❌
Anything else	No	❌

The middle row is the important one: your current value is a real entity in the ownership chain — it is not wrong, it is simply not the entity Delpha selected as the Ultimate Parent. Accuracy stays OK, but consistency is flagged so the difference remains visible and the recommendation is still offered.

When a record cannot be assessed

Case	What it means	Status	Comments field shows
Delpha-side error	Something failed during Delpha's processing	Failed	The technical error; all dimensions are left Unknown/unchecked
Missing input	The account has no website (or no name) to analyse	Not Found	A message asking for the missing field
Input mismatch	The name and the website describe two different companies (e.g. Delpha + volvo.com)	Not Found	The agent's explanation of the contradiction

Example

Let's look at a practical example: the account Heroku (heroku.com).

Delpha Reference Ultimate

"common": {
  "ultimate_parent_legal_name": "Salesforce, Inc.",
  "ultimate_parent_commercial_name": "Salesforce",
  "ultimate_parent_website": "https://www.salesforce.com/",
  "relationship_type": "Wholly Owned",
  "confidence": 1.0,
  "is_self_ultimate": false
}

Delpha identifies Salesforce, Inc. as the Reference Ultimate Parent, with a confidence of 1.0 (100%).

Customer Org Candidates

In the customer's Salesforce org, two accounts share the recommended root domain (salesforce.com):

Account	D Website Domain	D Hierarchy Count
Salesforce	salesforce.com	12
Salesforce France	salesforce.com	1

Matching Score Calculation (against the commercial name, Salesforce)

Item 1 — Salesforce

• Name similarity = 1.0 (identical) → 1.0 × 5

• Domain match = 1.0 → 1.0 × 3

• Hierarchy = ln(1+12) / ln(1+12) = 1.0 → 1.0 × 10

• Matching Score = (5 + 3 + 10) / 18 × 100 = 100

Item 2 — Salesforce France

• Name similarity = 1 − 7/17 = 0.59 → 0.59 × 5

• Domain match = 1.0 → 1.0 × 3

• Hierarchy = ln(1+1) / ln(1+12) = 0.27 → 0.27 × 10

• Matching Score = (2.94 + 3 + 2.70) / 18 × 100 = 48

✅ Best match: Salesforce (Matching Score = 100) ❌ Salesforce France falls below the 60 threshold and is dropped.

Final Confidence Score

A matching account was found, so the final confidence is the Matching Score itself: 100 (100%).

This is what ends up stored in D Ultimate Data:

"recommendations": [
  {
    "account_id": "001fo000009a6rSAAQ",
    "account_name": "Salesforce",
    "score": 100,
    "status": "Potential"
  }
]

Delpha therefore recommends Salesforce as the Ultimate Parent of Heroku in the customer's org, with a final confidence score of 100 (100%).

Delpha’s Ultimate Parent model is designed to reflect how companies actually operate and present themselves in the market — not how they’re legally registered. By focusing on the brand and operating structure, Delpha captures real commercial relationships, group affiliations, and brand hierarchies that drive sales, marketing, and territory management. This approach ensures more relevant and actionable insights, especially for franchise and multi-brand organizations, where legal ownership often differs from day-to-day operational reality.