The world has adapted to cloud computing and technology at a significant pace in the past decade. Organisations today rely heavily on digital services to manage their business. And data management is the most important aspect of a digital enterprise.
Poor data quality affects all the processes of the business in a negative way. It creates several difficulties and challenges.
Bad data slows down productivity and results in incorrect decision making. It can harm relationships with customers and eventually bring down business reputation. And so it becomes imperative to adhere to data cleansing practices to ensure the smooth working and efficiency of the business.
Even the most vigilant of employees make mistakes while entering the data in the system. A data cleansing routine ensures all poor data (e.g irrelevant data, duplicate data, outdated data, missing data, inaccurate data and siloed data) gets identified and removed from the database.
Salesforce is the number one CRM software in the world today. Many big enterprises depend on it for their business growth. However it can only reach its full potential when there is high quality data in your system. Following are some of the best tips and practices to prevent data quality issues.
Best Tips and Practices For Salesforce Data Cleansing
Routine Data Audit
In order to maintain data hygiene and data quality, it is necessary to audit the data on a regular basis. You can start with salesforce list views to get an insight on and filter the inaccurate data.
Scan the database and other related systems that depend on Salesforce data. Successfully map out the whole data network and by the end of this audit process you will have a realistic path to carry out data cleansing action.
Use The Right Tools
Handling large volumes of data can be an intimidating task. Going through the data to identify errors, duplicates and to validate and update the records manually will take a long time. This is where using the right tools will help in analyzing the salesforce data faster.
Automate the tasks which you can. With salesforce automation is easy as all the data sync to the cloud naturally. You can focus better on completing complex tasks like validation instead of worrying about losing time doing everything manually.
A database usually has thousands and even millions of record entries. With data cleansing tools you can rectify problems such as missing values and inaccurate data.
Validate The Data
For businesses using digital and cloud technology, it is important to validate their data from time to time. Contacts may change their details like phone number, addresses, email addresses and other professional information.
Sometimes mistakes can happen during data input even if the team was careful. To maintain the integrity of your salesforce data, validation is a must practice.
Clean out Poor Data
Once you have identified bad data, it’s time to clean it out from your salesforce database. Remove all the duplicate and irrelevant data. Delete records that don’t serve any value to your business.
If you find any old outdated files or partial records, get rid of them. They will only slow down your system further and will hardly provide any insight later during an analysis.
And then carry out standardization by rectifying any structural flaws.
Fix inconsistent And Missing Field Values
You can use the salesforce data loader to add and fix values in fields. It is not a quick fix because you need to record data in a CVS file to perform the bulk update on field values. However it is also the fastest way to mass update the data.
Set Data Quality Standards
For the long term quality of salesforce data, enforce predefined standards. Define required fields, use workflow rules, impose restrictions, depend on programming to ensure that only the right data gets entry in your system.
Empower your staff to input only the correct data from the start. Establish your firm’s data standards which should be followed by every person working in the organization.
Train Your Teams
Your team is essentially responsible for maintaining the quality and hygiene of the data. And so it is important to train and educate your staff. Data quality training for team members allows them to know what type of data should be entered and recorded.
The accuracy of your data will largely depend on how well your team is aware of the impact that data has on overall business. Data quality training will ensure cost and time saving in the longer run.
Sales teams should comply with data cleansing practices and act on the most accurate and best customer information.
Keep Up With New Innovations And Solutions
There are always some new updates and solutions that salesforce releases from time to time. Salesforce maintains API for a minimum of three years.
Take advantage of these innovations to maintain the quality of your salesforce data. Also, in addition to manual kits there are third party solutions to help keep the data quality high.
The Cost Of Poor Data
Bad data can have serious financial ramifications on the business. It can also hinder data driven initiatives. Ultimately it affects the growth and goals of an enterprise. According to research bad data results in a loss of $15 million per year on an average for businesses worldwide.
Making the salesforce data quality and data cleansing a priority is going to have a huge positive impact on the functioning and productivity of your business. Salesforce data hygiene if not taken into consideration will affect sales, marketing and production.
Also to provide clients with the best experience, regular data update and audit is necessary.
Salesforce data cleansing is not a final goal, in fact it’s a process and a journey. You need to employ the best practices and technology for the sanctity of the data. Start today by adopting the above mentioned practices and tips.