10 Ways to Improve Your Salesforce Data Quality

If you want to be alarmed, spend a moment learning how much money your company can lose as a result of bad data. According to IBM, filthy data costs the American economy more than $3 trillion annually. You don’t want to lose that money, of course. The reverse usually occurs, despite how easy it would seem to keep your data clean. Did you know that based on Salesforce’s best estimation, 71% of your data will become stale or obsolete over the course of the following year?

The probable outcomes are disastrous:

• According to what was just said, you’ll lose a lot of money.
• As they interact with clients, your salespeople will have less reliable information.
• It’s possible that your automatic communication flows are segmenting or sending messages to the wrong audiences
• Ineffective personalisation will confuse or even alienate your customers.

 

That is a serious issue. Without proper data management, businesses risk suffering significant declines in credibility, revenue, and effectiveness. You must take control of your data quality if you want to expand and remain competitive.  Some of that need a thorough organizational plan. It is imperative to preach from the mountaintops and incorporate excellent data practices into routine business operations. Such a strategy needs time and effort, as well as support from the leadership. The good news is that you don’t have to wait for that to occur.  In truth, businesses utilizing Salesforce can benefit from the consistency of their data across time by following a few simple guidelines. They’re simple, approachable, and easy to implement. These are our top 10 ways to improve your salesforce data quality

 

1. Observe

Data quality declines quickly and exponentially, as anyone who has managed even a tiny database will attest. Users occasionally update existing records incorrectly, deleting or changing information by mistake, or replacing accurate information with inaccurate data. Despite an administrator’s best efforts at prevention, new entries, whether manually entered or imported, usually contain a certain amount of problematic fields. Because of this, it’s essential to constantly check the database for inaccurate data and detect and fix it.

The COVID-19 pandemic makes ongoing database monitoring even more crucial. In a recent survey, 79% of CRM administrators claimed that the pandemic has caused CRM data to deteriorate more quickly. Why? A lot of it has to do with the “Great Resignation” Workers across all industries are changing jobs in droves. As they do so, their data (phone numbers, addresses, job titles, etc.) changes with them.  Plus, as people continue to work remotely, office locations and addresses are becoming irrelevant. This means leads and contact information in your CRM are going stale—and fast.  

 

2. Adopt a uniform approach

Name-calling is never acceptable in the real world. However, it is encouraged in your CRM. Every data administrator should create a quality guideline that makes it obvious what constitutes “high-quality data” and what constitutes “low-quality data.” This standard is actually a set of guidelines or tests that, when applied to a database, help to detect inaccurate data and, in some situations, correct it automatically. These requirements ought to guard against inaccurate data entry as well. Setting standards for abbreviations and formatting requirements for names, addresses, states, ZIP Codes, etc. may be necessary to achieve this. You should routinely review your initial criteria after setting them in order to make adjustments or modifications. No matter how quickly the database changes or the business develops, this will guarantee that data quality stays high.

 

3. Duplicate

Duplicate CRM records confuse users, waste time, and make it harder for them to see the full picture of a customer relationship. Although these records can be located and fixed manually, CRM users will get better results using a duplication prevention tool. Such solutions can frequently search the database for duplicate records and build scenarios that specify how to handle those duplicates, such as automatically merging, deleting, or alerting pertinent users.

 

4. Purge

Choose and use tried-and-true data cleansing solutions to assist you in achieving your database’s quality criteria after developing one. Competitive sales and marketing teams frequently use third-party solutions to scan the database for records that don’t meet the quality requirement and fix them. Automated searches and merges should be carried out on a regular basis to constantly maintain a high level of data quality. Depending on how frequently data changes in your company, this can happen every day or every week.

 

5. Verify

The world would still be dynamic even if users could only enter or import clean data. People change employment, firms relocate or combine, and companies grow. Even contact information that was current three months ago could not be accurate today. Processes that assure timely data collection must be put in place, and whenever possible, contacts must be verified against reliable outside sources. Consider using an email verification solution that handles the research for you if you want to go the extra step to confirm that email addresses are valid.

 

6. Check

You should check that records have been updated correctly and are in line with the necessary quality standard after completing the remedial procedures mentioned above. Once this is finished, staff members across the business will be able to make decisions that are well-informed and supported by reliable data.

7. Inform

If no one is aware of these meticulously designed procedures and standards, they are useless. Seize every chance to inform managers and users about the value of high-quality data, advocating for data integrity both to the organization as a whole and to individual employees who depend on it.

 

8. Implement

The key is to make sure that the standards you establish are followed, that users receive the appropriate training, and that access to data is restricted as needed. Schemas should first be created with data quality in mind. These ought to:

• Set needed fields.
• When feasible, use the pre-populated default values.
• Create workflow rules and field dependencies (e.g., if A and B exist, then C must exist).
• Decide which users are permitted to create Accounts, Contacts, Leads, and other objects.
• Implement validation guidelines to guarantee accurate data entry.
• Put limitations on data from the web to the lead.

 

9. Communicate

As a CRM administrator, you are typically in charge of responding to inquiries and informing users of any changes to the user interface of the CRM (such as the addition of new fields), changes to naming conventions, updates to policies and standards, and anything else pertaining to the user experience. It may be tempting to prioritize technical talents above soft qualities in this position. However, those who are excellent communicators and deeply committed to serving others are the most effective Salesforce administrators. User adoption and adherence to rules will be encouraged by creating a welcoming environment where users feel at ease asking questions, talking about issues, and making changes.

 

10. Ask for assistance

The greatest CRM administrators should always keep in mind that they are not Superman. Recognize that you might need to go beyond a basic, manual toolset and employ advanced third-party solutions in order to attain and maintain a consistently high level of CRM data quality in 2022. Most include tools that let CRM administrators maintain a clean database by working more effectively rather than harder. There is only so much you can do to enhance data quality without the aid of specialized software programs, even after implementing our first nine professional suggestions

 

CONCLUSION

Quality data drives user adoption for Salesforce, improves team productivity, and ensures a positive reputation with your clients. Overall, having high-quality data is essential for making wise business decisions. Users of Salesforce can help you maintain high data quality. An effective tactic is to reward those who care about data quality to encourage consumers to keep an eye out for it. Additionally, you can put in place routine audits of your Salesforce data, which will not only help you monitor the quality of the data in your org but will also show you where you can make improvements to your procedures to maintain your data as reliable as possible.

Written by Meshach Dimka