CRM Data Cleaning is as Important as Protecting it from Security Breaches

CRMs, also known as Customer Relationship Management software, are a huge upgrade to the traditional systems used for customer management. If you compare the modern CRMs with the traditional systems, you would realize that CRMs can help you understand customer behavior, their habits and other aspects in a very clear, yet systematic manner.

However, when CRMs are being updated by different sets of people, it often becomes extremely difficult to avoid human errors. Such errors can be typos, data inconsistencies, or even other types of data entry issues, making the process of data management difficult. In order to keep a level of consistency within your data, every user should be apprised of the right ways and standards of updating the data within the portal.

Simply put, as soon as some policies and procedures are in place, chances are your data would be a little more streamlined and your organization can move towards achieving its data goals in a more systematic manner.

So how does one go about formatting data, to ensure it is up to date, and filled in the most appropriate manner? Here is a list of points which can help you keep your CRM data clean, allowing you to take well informed, data driven decisions:

Analyze the input data: Analysis is the first and foremost point of action for anyone looking to maintain standardized data within their CRMs. This way, you will get a fairly good idea of how the data is structured, what is the preferred state you would want to get to, and what are the various types of data issues you are currently facing. In other words, benchmark the data standards, and then take it on from there. During the analysis stage, you can highlight the type of errors recurring in your data, duplicity issues, typos, inconsistent abbreviations, etc. Make a note of every anomaly, and then start actioning everything one by one.

Cleaning your data: Data cleansing is not an easy task. For this very reason, it needs to be planned and structured in a very systematic manner. There needs to be a policy mandate outlining the details for updating information into the CRM database. Users should be given training to familiarize themselves with the requirements of the database. Any errors, which are noticed after the trainings, should be rectified and appropriate levels of feedback should be provided to the users.

Duplicate data entries: Since the data is updated manually, there are high chances of duplicate entries being updated in the database. This will not only skew the data but can also create issues for the automate processes. CRMs are created to assist automation, may it be in terms of sending automated mails to the customers, etc. However, if the data is not unique, customers might end up receiving multiple mails, causing discontent in the customers’ minds. Data duplicity should be addressed at regular intervals, so that the data in the CRM is unique and free from errors.

Update the missing information: Missing information can cause the automated processes to derail. For example, the customer’s name or email address was not updated in the database. When the automation procedure was run, an incorrect email was triggered, since the important details were missing. While this was just an example of missing data, the idea is to make all pieces of information available within the database, to ensure maximum, yet accurate usage.

Data protection: Data cleaning might be one issue, but data protection is another important issue which needs to be addressed at regular periods of time. Given the high volumes of data breaches these days, protecting the data has become every organization’s prime goal. Appropriate measures should be incorporated into the CRM database logics to ensure hackers are not easily able to gain access to confidential information.

Data enhancement: Data cleaning and protection are important, but they are incomplete without data enhancement. Simply put, the existing data can’t take you forward; for this purpose, you need to keep updating your CRM database to ensure that your data is expanding, and the outreach is also improving. This way, as more and more customers are added to the list, the data would become viable and easier to use.