Data Cleaning Process

Salesforce Tips for Managing Your Data Cleaning Process Effectively

In the current business environment, data is an asset that can dictate the success or failure of your business. You can utilize data to make informed business decisions, learn about your customers, improve your products and services and steer business growth in the long term. However, you need high-quality data free of errors to derive accurate and valuable insights that can help you meet your business goals.

In your data warehouse used for critical business decisions, data hygiene is necessary to remove redundant information and correct errors that lower data quality and accuracy. Read on to learn more about bad data, the importance of data cleaning, and Salesforce best practices to help you manage data cleaning effectively.  

Understanding Bad Salesforce Data?

Bad Salesforce data can occur for various reasons, including poor data collection techniques, natural data decay, input errors, and bad data imports and exports. Also, changes such as mergers and acquisitions or addresses due to the company moving to new locations can happen over time. It is, therefore, necessary to clean your Salesforce data to ensure it is accurate, up to date, and supports your business processes. Here are common forms of bad data you should know.

  • Duplicate data
  • Inaccurate data
  • Outdated data
  • Missing data
  • Data entry errors like typos
  • Formatting inconsistencies

The Importance of Salesforce Data Cleansing

Although a business can anticipate data errors, most do not understand the negative impact they may have on the organization. With time, bad data can accumulate and adversely affect your marketing campaigns, hinder team productivity, stunt sales initiatives, and even lead to resource misallocation. In the long run, your business may find it hard to maintain current relationships or create new ones.

Salesforce data cleaning leaves you with valuable data that can help you make wise business decisions that contribute to business growth, increase revenue and boost the efficiency of your business. It also facilitates better audience targeting for your teams, which is necessary for successful marketing campaigns.

Besides benefiting your business directly, having clean data is beneficial to your customer relationships. When your team knows what clients want, they can deliver better products and services, leading to a positive customer experience and client satisfaction. Since you derive valuable insights from clean data, your company can enjoy a competitive edge in the industry by identifying more opportunities for profitably.

dont miss out iconDon't forget to check out: Why Duplicate Data Is a Problem | Salesforce Guide

Tips for Managing Data Cleaning Effectively

After knowing what bad data is and why you need to clean it, it is time to eliminate the clutter and make the necessary adjustments. The data cleansing process is an ongoing process that can quickly become a daunting task, especially if you are dealing with large amounts of information. Here are a few Salesforce tips to help you manage your data cleaning process effectively and attain better data quality.

  1. Identify the Cause of Bad Data

The first step to remedying bad data and achieving a productive and seamless data cleaning process is identifying its root cause. Understand the entry points of most of the errors you are experiencing, such as human error and poor data collection techniques.

Once you establish the cause of bad data, you can easily decide what you need to change or improve to enhance your data quality. For example, if a human error during data entry is responsible is the culprit, you can train your employees to improve their skills. For technical errors, updating your software can make all the difference during your data management and minimize mistakes.

  1. Select the Right Tools

When dealing with large datasets, manually cleaning and managing your data can be time-consuming and inefficient. Choose the appropriate tools to make the work easier and faster, and reduce manual tasks.

With data cleaning software, you can automate your data cleaning and perform tasks like removing duplicates, correcting typos, and adding missing values. Some of the tools you may need to manage your Salesforce data cleaning include:

  • Auditing software for broad errors
  • Deduplication tools to remove duplicated data
  • Third-party contact data for missing fields and errors

If you decide to invest in data cleaning tools, you will need to train your employers to use them to ensure efficiency. Alternatively, you can invest in an expert Salesforce administrator who understands how to integrate data cleaning tools and get the most out of them. Also, work with a data vendor committed to providing your CRM with clean data so you can focus on other crucial aspects of your business.

  1. Create a Data Cleaning Schedule

Salesforce data cleansing is not a one-time practice. Once you clean your data, you need to maintain the data quality to prevent errors from occurring in the future. Create a data cleaning schedule to ensure you perform regular data audits and cleansing whenever necessary. You should evaluate your data every six months, although you can do it quarterly or annually.

You can perform tasks like data validation and deduping monthly to maintain the health of your Salesforce data. By scheduling a data cleaning schedule, you avoid accumulating errors and bad data that will cost you time and money in the long term.

dont miss out iconCheck out an amazing Salesforce video tutorial here: Duplicate Management In Salesforce | Duplicate Rule and Matching Rule

  1. Set Data Entry Standards

Standardization is one of the best ways to attain uniformity and consistency in your data. It enables you to treat all data the same, thus eliminating common errors like data duplication. For cases where data entry starts with a customer filling a form and the employer manually entering it into the system, there are high chances of inconsistencies and errors.

To avoid this, set rules that all data forms should follow and put in place validation standards. When collecting data online, web forms can make it easier to attain uniformity. Lastly, train your employees and implement the guidelines throughout your organization to avoid future errors. Despite the above being difficult to monitor through business KPIs and metrics, it is critical for business maintenance

With the above tips, it will become easier to manage your data cleaning process and avoid errors that may jeopardize your data integrity. On the same note, prioritize cloud data security to protect your high-quality data. In case of a data breach or loss, you can mitigate the effects of the disaster and bounce back within no time. If you need help with Salesforce management, don’t hesitate to reach out to our experts for help.

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