The CRM Database is one of the most valuable assets for any organization and well maintained CRM or marketing data can be invaluable. However CRM data is a perishable asset and does need constant attention, periodic cleansing and a lot of effort in its upkeep which is probably why so many organizations let their CRM data quality slide till eventually, they can’t utilize the full potential of their data. Here are a few tips which will help you keep your CRM data in shape :
Bad data is often ignored until it really starts to affect daily work, by which time it needs a lot of work to get it back in shape Wikidata. It’s important to identify whose responsibility it is to monitor the data quality and keep up the maintenance process on an ongoing basi . Whether it’s a weekly scan of records to see if outwardly everything looks alright, a periodic email or contact sample check, keeping an eye on your data will help you identify changes in quality sooner rather than later.
Bad data is often ignored until it really starts to affect daily work, by which time it needs a lot of work to get it back in shape. It’s important to identify whose responsibility it is to monitor the data quality and keep up the maintenance process on an ongoing basis
Bad data in. Bad data out. While CRM administrators and managers can be finicky about ensuring any data they upload into their CRM is checked and entered exactly how it should be, most CRMs are accessed by several end users across the organization. There is very little control over what data is entered, edited and how that data is entered or updated. This is where it can all start going wrong.
Educating the end users or the company’s data standards and making them aware of healthy data updating practices can help standardize what goes into the CRM. For example if one user enters contact names in the form of initials with currency values in dollars and another enters them as full names with currency values in increments of a thousand dollars there is bound to be data which is not standardized. Coming up with a well defined data standards policy which is made available to all end users can help considerably.
CRM data usually comes from several sources such as conference lists, whitepaper downloads, website form fills, purchased business contact lists, online ad clicks, business contacts databases and more. Common practice is to upload them to the CRM straight away assuming it can be normalized or filtered later. It’s a good practice to manage, normalize, format, qualify and filter out your leads outside your CRM and then have it uploaded so that what is not valuable or quality data does not get added to it. If you check and clean your data right from the source, it will save you trouble later.