Data Quality Considerations when Consolidating Salesforce Orgs

Introduction

Salesforce CRM is a vital system for many organizations. Over time, some organizations may find themselves managing multiple instances of Salesforce, often due to mergers, acquisitions, or independent deployments across different business units. Eventually, consolidating these Salesforce orgs becomes necessary to reduce license costs, reduce technical debt, and establish a single source of truth. In this context, ActivePrime CleanData is instrumental in ensuring good data quality for a smooth and successful consolidation.

The Importance of Good Data Quality when Consolidating Salesforce Orgs

One of the main risks during Salesforce org consolidation is migrating problematic data into the new, unified Salesforce instance. Data migration can become daunting when Salesforce has been in use for a long time. There are multiple data migration approaches, Big Bang and Phased. Each approach has its pros/cons and is not a topic of discussion for this article.  The discussion topic in this article is the importance of migrating good-quality data when consolidating Salesforce instances.

Regardless of the data migration approach the organization selects, making data cleansing a priority before migration ensures that data is clean before entering the new Salesforce instance. Just as in data migration, there are multiple options with data quality during migration - though we’re going to focus on the two most common: “Lift and Shift” and “Improve and Move”.

Lift and Shift

Some organizations may choose a "lift and shift" approach, moving data as-is from the retiring Salesforce instance into the new instance. This strategy brings the same data quality issues into the new system and can introduce errors in the migration impacting time and costs. It can also waste limited resources and inflate data storage costs. This is amplified further when multiple Salesforce instances are consolidated increasing the cost of ownership rather than reducing it.

Improve and Move

Other organizations may choose an “improve and move” approach, improving the quality of data before migration. Salesforce org consolidation is an excellent opportunity to identify and resolve any existing data issues. Only migrating the needed data can reduce the project’s scale and complexity. For example, standardizing picklist values can prevent errors and allow the migration process to complete smoothly, saving time and cost.

If regulatory compliance necessitates retaining certain data, it can be archived. However, archiving poor-quality data only defers the problem. For more information on archiving see the blog article: Archiving Good Quality Data in Salesforce: Why It’s Critical and How to Do It Right

The table below provides a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of each option.

Options	Advantages	Disadvantages
Lift and Shift	The migration project can start immediately if data quality is good	The new Salesforce instance inherits data issues from the old instance(s) Increase migration errors impacting time and cost Each Salesforce instance being migrated adds more bad data
Improve and Move	Reduce effort when analyzing data for migration Move only the data needed, reducing project risks, time, and cost Start the new Salesforce instance with clean, trusted data Less effort for ongoing data quality maintenance	Need to acquire a data quality solution

ActivePrime recommends cleansing Salesforce data before migrating it to ensure maximum benefits from the consolidation. ActivePrime CleanData provides a robust solution to this challenge. By cleansing Salesforce data before migration, CleanData helps organizations maximize the benefits of Salesforce org consolidation. CleanData automatically identifies and resolves inconsistencies and other issues, creating datasets that are unique, accurate, consistent, valid, and complete. This ensures that the newly consolidated Salesforce org is optimized for performance, regulatory compliance, and data-driven decision-making.

Conclusion

While organizations may not always control the number of Salesforce instances they have - especially in cases of mergers or business unit autonomy, they can control the quality of data they migrate. ActivePrime CleanData is essential for cleansing Salesforce data before any consolidation to reduce errors, risks, time, and costs.