Introduction
Starting a data quality journey early is critical to ensuring your Salesforce data supports business goals effectively. The best time to start depends on your organization's current data landscape and priorities. It’s recommended that organizations should start their data quality strategy early to prevent poor data quality in Salesforce from spiraling out of control. However, budgeting and including data quality initiatives are often an afterthought for many organizations.
In this article, we’ll discuss reasons why your organization should consider starting your Salesforce data quality journey early.
During Initial Salesforce Implementation
Why? Starting data quality initiatives during implementation ensures clean data is migrated to Salesforce and clean data is maintained. It prevents poor data quality from taking root and spiraling out of control.
What to do:
Start your Salesforce data quality journey as early as possible and treat it as an ongoing process. The earlier your organization addresses data quality, the less costly and disruptive it will be.
Ensure there is a sufficient budget for a data quality tool like ActivePrime CleanData. It’s less costly to start the data quality journey early than later.
Conduct a data audit to identify redundant, outdated, or incomplete records before data comes into Salesforce. If it’s after, a tool like CleanData can help your organization to identify and resolve data issues.
Create data validation rules and picklists to enforce consistency.
Set up data governance processes.
Train users on data hygiene.
When Expanding Salesforce Usage
Why? As your organization onboards new users or integrates additional systems, data quality issues can multiply if left unmanaged.
What to do:
Standardize data fields and formats across departments.
Implement deduplication tools like CleanData and workflows.
Define ownership for data stewardship.
Before Major Salesforce Projects or Integrations
Why? Mergers, acquisitions, or integrations with other systems can introduce massive amounts of inconsistent data such as duplicate customer records.
What to do:
Cleanse and deduplicate data before integration.
Use a tool like CleanData Import to match records from import files with Salesforce to identify duplicate records.
When Compliance or Reporting Becomes a Priority
Why? Regulatory requirements (like GDPR or CCPA) or strategic reporting needs often highlight gaps in data quality.
What to do:
Conduct a data compliance audit.
Implement tools like CleanData to monitor and maintain data accuracy continuously with minimal manual intervention.
Train teams on compliance-related data practices.
Continuous Data Quality Monitoring & Resolving
Why? Data quality deteriorates over time without consistent oversight.
What to do:
Deploy an always-on solution like CleanData to continuously identify data and resolve data issues.
Monitor key metrics (e.g., duplicate rates, missing fields, and outdated records) with CleanData data quality dashboards.
Automate maintenance tasks where possible.
Signs It's Time to Start Immediately
Why? It’s time to conduct a data quality health check when:
A high percentage of incomplete or inconsistent records.
Increasing duplicates in leads, contacts, or accounts.
Poor system adoption rates due to data issues.
Inability to trust data for decision-making or forecasting.
What do do:
Get your complimentary Data Quality Assessment from ActivePrime and receive a report with tangible evidence of your organization’s data quality health.
How can ActivePrime help?
ActivePrime CleanData offers AI-enabled solutions to enhance the quality of your Salesforce CRM data, ensuring it is accurate, consistent, and reliable. Here's how ActivePrime can assist in your organization’s data quality journey:
1. Comprehensive Data Quality Assessment
ActivePrime provides a Data Quality Assessment (DQA) for Salesforce customers. This evaluation helps identify issues such as duplicates, incomplete records, and inconsistencies within your Salesforce data. The assessment process typically spans two weeks and involves minimal time commitment from your team. Your organization will receive a comprehensive report with tangible results of the health of the data in Salesforce.
2. CleanData Solution
ActivePrime's CleanData is an AI-driven solution designed to identify, resolve, and prevent data issues in Salesforce through:
Duplicate Detection and Merging: Automatically identifies and merges duplicate records to ensure a single, accurate customer record. CleanData also identifies and resolves multiple data issues outside of duplicate records, such as formatting issues, junk data, damaged data, missing data, misplaced data, and incorrect data.
DeDupe Before Import: CleanData Import dedupes the records in CSV files against your Salesforce records prior to importing them. CleanData Import cleanses and imports Accounts, Contacts, Leads, and others to achieve high data quality in your Salesforce.
Data Enrichment: Validate and enrich address fields for accuracy, standardization, and completeness using multiple trusted third-party sources.
Automated Data Resolution: Utilizes AI to continuously monitor and rectify data issues, reducing manual intervention and maintaining data integrity.
In summary, ActivePrime CleanData provides a robust framework for identifying, resolving, and preventing Salesforce CRM data issues, ensuring it remains a valuable asset for your organization.