Data quality the ‘salt’ in your business dish!
By: Vasseenee Moonien
Tags: Data, Salesforce, CRM

Photo by Franki Chamaki on Unsplash

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a focal system of an organization. One of its quests is to be the single source of truth when it comes to data. Therefore, it is of foremost importance that this data is reliable and truly reflects the organization whether it is in terms of internal data such as employee information or external data such as customer details.

Consequently, there is no debating how important data is for all businesses across industries. As much as it is pointless to argue on the value of data, much can be said on the importance of data quality. As typically referred to, good data is useful however bad data is not only useless, but it can also have a negative impact specially in terms of undermining the customer experience.

There are various ways that data administrators or data owners can use their CRM to help them achieve an acceptable and reliable database. Salesforce CRM can be an important ally in making this happen. There are various ways that Salesforce can help you manage your data. Some of these are as follows:

Structured data capture

Many often underestimate the paramount importance of visual representation. While often mistaken as a benign feature, Salesforce provides the user with the flexibility to have various types of layouts that can help to control the appearance of fields. Some of the layouts available are Page Layout — display of the object, Search Layout — display fields of an object in various result lists, Compact Layout — highlight a record’s important fields amongst others.

The advantages that this feature can bring are diverse, especially when it is known that businesses and their focus can vary. In a gist, the user can customize the order in which the fields appear, which fields are visible, read only or mandatory and how to display standard and custom buttons on the page.

Visual markings to indicate sections of data capture, mandatory fields etc.

Simple one would say — a red asterisk symbol (*) next to a required field.

Think about it, a form containing multiple fields needs to be filled. Every time the user saves the form, an alert is displayed that field xx is missing. After a few attempts, the user is annoyed and decides to either quit or postpone for later. A common scenario that can be avoided with some simple manipulation. Why not mark the fields such that the user can immediately see which fields are required and needs to be filled for successful submission? Just like that you have gained points and improved your customer/employee experience.

Automation by using matching and duplicate rules

When one thinks about improving data quality, duplicate records come in mind as a deterrent. Everyone has doubles or trebles of the same information; it is not intentional but with time, users inadvertently end up creating the same record multiple times. Having duplicate records not only paints an inaccurate picture of the business but it can also have a ripple effect when linked with other records making the subsequent data unreliable.

To circumvent this, Salesforce provides users with the possibility to create matching and duplicate rules. These are set up by the users and magic happens in the background. Duplicate rules and matching rules work together to identify and show duplicates. Basically, matching rules provide the basis on which a record should be identified as a duplicate record, e.g., Accounts name are the same, or Account name and email address are the same etc. Duplicate rules then complement this by defining what needs to be done when a duplicate record is found, should it alert the user with a warning message or block the user from creating the record.

Validation rules

Validation rules can be another means to maintain data integrity. It’s a way to put some logic tests on fields or on the page and if these conditions are not met, the user gets alerted.

The possibilities are diverse, it provides for means on how data input can be controlled through pre-set rules that follow a certain convention and is conform.

Some simple examples are telephone format — to specify the number of digits, email address — to specify a typical email format or on a more complex level, only certain users can change selected fields.

Data Import Wizard

All the above features will work nicely when records are being entered one by one. However, what happens when multiple records need to beinput at a time. An example could be that an event takes place where a bunch of potential customers are identified, lets call them leads. These leads now need to be input into Salesforce for follow up. A feature that will be handy in such a case is the ‘Data Import Wizard’. A standard feature in Salesforce, this user-friendly wizard helps to easily import data for many objects such as Accounts, Contacts, Leads and even custom objects. As many as 50,000 records can be uploaded at a time using this wizard. And as a cherry on the cake, it will even do duplicate matching and prevent these data from being loaded.

Find any of the above interesting, let Spoon Consulting help you to get a better insight and start working on improving the data quality in your CRM.

For more information, kindly visit our website https://www.spoonconsulting.com