CRM Maintenance Basics: Solving the Dirty Data Problem

Data is one of the most important resources for a business, but with how quickly markets change and grow, data is also constantly changing. Whatever data you have stored in your database right now may not be as useful or up to date in the coming weeks or months. Moreover, inaccurate data can cause businesses planning problems and revenue losses.

According to recent research by Gartner, organizations believe that poor data quality is the reason for losses averaging up to $15 million dollars a year. Common data errors plague 91% of organizations while 30% of them consider duplicate data as one of the top data errors that they encounter. In fact, many US companies believe that about 25% of their data is inaccurate. This could be because 66% of these companies lack a coherent, centralized approach to maintaining data quality.

Maintaining your CRM and other database systems is essential. Eliminating dirty data properly and regularly is one method to ensure that content in your database is effective for business decisions, planning, and projections.

What is ‘Dirty Data’?

Dirty data is any data that contains erroneous information. It can come in many forms, but one thing is common: inaccurate data detracts from business success and can limit your team’s productivity and efficiency. You can consider data dirty if it is:

• Inconsistent. Redundancy of data where the same field or information is stored in different place leading to inconsistencies.
• Inaccurate. Records are not completely correct and contain inaccurate data points such as customer addresses with a wrong street number or customer names with misspellings.
• Incorrect. Information stored does not match the field it was entered in such as a date of birth field containing the current date instead.
• Duplicate. Copies of records and repetitive data can be costly as it affects the accuracy of the customer and prospect counts in a database. The accumulation of duplicate records also impacts CRM storage space as well as inventory and procurement decisions.
• Incomplete. Records with missing details cannot effectively serve a purpose. This can hamper business continuity or affect productivity, especially for organizations that use data as part of their day-to-day operations.

With so many ways dirty data can impact your CRM, conducing regular CRM maintenance to cleanse your data quickly becomes important.

Why Regular CRM Maintenance is Important

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can be business’ core database of operations and decision making. CRMs are also a bridge that connects your business to your customers and maintain a healthy relationship with them. Scheduling regular CRM maintenance to avoid potential system problems that could affect your daily operations is a critical step. A simple data error can severely cost a business. With dirty data, your marketing campaigns and outreach programs may not work as effectively as compared to using quality data. Through regular CRM maintenance, you can:

• Make use of more consistent data across all departments in your organization
• Provide better customer support and increase your customer retention and acquisition rate
• Create better products and services that your customers will want to purchase
• Allow you to identify and categorize your leads more efficiently to make the most of every available sales opportunity
• Run more focused and effective marketing campaigns
• Improve your bottom line

Why Data Quality Should be a Priority

Many businesses don’t seem to see the value of maintaining good data quality. Despite the value that clean data can provide, many companies struggle to put their data to good use. Quality data can be a great tool in helping businesses achieve their goals. Here are some of the reasons why you should put data quality management at the forefront of your business operations.

1. Enhanced efficiency and resource management

According to a recent report by Experian on data quality management, 52% of the organizations they have surveyed are driven to maintain high-quality data for the purpose of increasing efficiency, while 40% of the respondents cite cost savings as the reason. With better data quality, businesses can save more time, money, manpower, and other resources in handling various functions and day-to-day processes.

2. Improved regulatory compliance

To ensure organizations are in compliance with business and industry regulations, verify that the data being used for your operations is secured, well maintained, and updated. With the implementation of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), companies are required to give users the choice to opt out of having their personal data sold. In this light, businesses need clean, organized CRM records to maintain customer preferences and ensure compliance with this regulation, among others.

3. Better decision making

The decisions made by a business operator can make or break the organization. The ability to make strategic decisions requires trustworthy data. A properly maintained database can help business managers make better, well-informed decisions. As more businesses rely on data for making sound decisions, the ability to maintain quality data has also become a priority.

How to Cleanse Your CRM

Now that we have established the importance of maintaining your CRM and eliminating dirty data, you will need to establish a plan and options for your CRM clean up. There are three options for you to accomplish this.

1. Hire an in-house CRM and database manager

Managing customer data can be a full-time job. For an organization to prevent dirty data, employ a professional database manager, or perhaps a team, to handle your CRM maintenance needs. The number of people that you will assign for this maintenance task will depend on the size of your CRM system as well as your budget.

2. Use a CRM maintenance tool

Most modern CRM software now offer enhanced features, tools, and integrations that help monitor and maintain CRM data integrity. These options can easily identify records with issues such as duplication, inaccuracy, or inconsistency. However, these features are only limited to flagging and reporting on items and will still need frequent human intervention to address them.

3. Outsource your CRM maintenance needs

Consider outsourcing CRM maintenance to a reliable third-party provider. Data clean up and appending can be extremely time consuming and require a large number of internal resources. Outsourcing these tasks with a clear picture of your needs and processes can expedite maintenance for a fraction of the time and cost.

Maintaining quality data is a necessity for successful businesses. Considering the many benefits that you can reap from using clean and error-free data, having a CRM maintenance solution in place is the right way to go.

Here at Assivo, we can take care of your CRM data cleansing and quality data management needs. Having worked with various businesses from all across the globe, we understand the importance of quality work, confidentiality, and security. By outsourcing your CRM maintenance to us, we will make sure that your database is no longer plagued by dirty data. Want to know if your CRM system needs a cleanse? We provide comprehensive CRM health checks with a detailed analysis report free of charge.