Best Practices for Managing and Merging Duplicate Accounts in Salesforce Without Data Loss

I’m currently working on a use case in Salesforce where we have a large number of duplicate Accounts in the system. This is creating issues for reporting, pipeline visibility, and overall data quality. I’m exploring the best ways to consolidate these duplicates without losing important data such as related Contacts, Opportunities, and activities. Using Duplicate Rules and Matching Rules Using the Merge Accounts feature Data cleanup through tools like Data Loader or third-party deduplication tools