Salesforce CRM Basics - Data Quality

The first step in assessing data quality is to figure out how your account uses customer data to support its business objectives.

You meet with managers and reps across your account and ask them:

·         What are your business objectives?

·         What customer data do you need to support those objectives?

·         How are you using that customer data?

·         Where is your customer data stored?

There’s several key attributes that are important to data quality. It’s important to understand these dimensions before fixing any data problems.

Data Quality Dimension	Description	How to Assess It
Age	Data doesn’t age like fine wine. When’s the last time each record was updated?	Run a report on the Last Modified Date of records. What percentage of records have been updated recently?
Completeness	Peanut butter without the jelly? No way! Similarly, you can’t find upsell opportunities without complete company hierarchy and industry information. Are all key business fields on records filled in?	Make a list of which fields are required for each business use. Then, run a report that shows the percentage of blanks for these fields. You can also use a data quality app from the AppExchange.
Accuracy	You don’t win Olympic gold for missing the target. Is your data as accurate as possible? Has it been matched against a trusted source?	Install a data quality app from the AppExchange. It’ll match your records against a trusted source and tell you how your data can be improved.
Consistency	Is the same formatting, spelling, and language used across records?	Run a report to show the values used for date, currency, state, country, and region fields. How many variations are used for a single value?
Duplication	Sometimes 2 isn’t better than 1. Duplicate data often means inefficiencies. Are records and data duplicated in your org?	Install a duplicate detection app from the AppExchange.
Usage	Use it or lose it! Is your data being leveraged in reports, dashboards, and apps?	Review the available tools and resources your business uses. Are you optimizing data use?

One of the AppExchange packages you really like is the Data.com Assessment App. 

You now know how important data quality is to business growth. Bad data is linked to lost revenue, missing insights, and reputational damage—to name just a few things. Good data, on the other hand, lets your account do things fast and accurately, like prospect and target new customers, identify cross sell opportunities, and plan territories.

The first step to improving data quality: develop a data management plan.

A typical data management plan includes standards for creating, processing, and maintaining data. Check out this useful reference table.

Data Standard	Description	Example
Naming	Set naming conventions for records. Always include suffixes (Inc., Corp)? Abbreviations?	Make sure that company names are never abbreviated except when the abbreviation is the standard name.
Formatting	Figure out how dates and money are represented.	Use dd/mm/yyyy for all date formats.
Workflow	Determine processes for record creation, reviewing, updating, and archiving. Determine all the stages a record goes through during its lifecycle.	Route service requests associated with California companies to reps in California.
Quality	Set appropriate standards for data quality, including the ability to measure or score records. Put a value on age, completeness, usage, accuracy, consistency, and duplication, along with any other quality or value metrics specific to your business.	Active leads should be updated at least once per month.
Roles and Ownership	Determine who owns records, who’s accountable for changes to data, and who’s notified when there are changes to data.	Assign leads associated with California companies to sales reps in California.
Security and Permissions	Determine the appropriate levels of privacy for data. Make sure to comply with regulatory, legal, and contractual obligations.	Make sure that only regional team members can view confidential information on their leads.
Monitoring	Outline a process for ensuring quality control of data. Determine the frequency, scope, owners, and checks, including ways for updating data, preventing duplicates, merging records, adding records, and archiving records. Determine metrics that can be easily monitored in a dashboard.	Review leads without industry information on the first day of each month.

To implement your data plan, make Salesforce work for you! Specifically, make it easier to create, update, and maintain customer data with a few key Salesforce features.

Required Fields

You already know which fields are necessary to support your account's business objectives. It’s in your data management plan. So make those fields required. For your account’s leads, you make several custom fields required, including those fields related to important dates and industry information. Then, leads can be properly scored, assigned, and converted.

Validation Rule

Want to make sure that phone numbers follow a particular format? Use validation rules. Just set up validation rules for any field. Then, when records are saved, the data is checked to make sure that it follows the appropriate format. Validation rules are super versatile. For example, to make a standard field required, you can use a validation rule that checks to see if the field is blank. You use validation rules for phone, credit card, and customer ID fields. You also use validation rules to make standard lead contact info fields required.

Workflow Rules

Workflow rules are the magic wand in your Salesforce implementation act. Workflow rules let you automate standard internal procedures and processes to save time across your organization. You set up workflow rules so that leads are routed to the nearest rep. You do this to assign service requests, too. Now, your account’s reps can focus their time on growing business--not assigning records.

Page Layouts

There’s a zillion fields on some records, and you know your reps aren’t using half of them. So, ditch ‘em! That’s right, you remove them from the page layout for your reps. In fact, you create customized page layouts for different kind of reps and managers across your account. Give them the fields they need when they need them. While you’re at it, you put the most important, required fields at the top.

Dashboards

Why make your reps and managers wade through the swamp of reports and records? Instead, create simple dashboards to support business objectives. For your account, you create a series of dashboards for managers across company to show things like lead assignment and missing campaign data.

Data Enrichment Tools

Data is obsolete almost as soon as it’s entered. That’s why it’s important to regularly match your data against a trusted source. There’s a number of products that let you do this. You settle on Data.com Clean, which is available right within Salesforce!

Duplicate Management

Duplicate records are the bane of any rep’s existence! Which record is the right record? You make sure there’s one account record for each of your account's customer. Then, you leverage Duplicate Management, Salesforce’s built-in duplicate management tool, to prevent future duplicates.

Custom Field Types

You know the format your account wants to use for dates and currency. So, leverage field types on any custom fields. You make sure to assign all custom date fields to a Type = Date and all custom currency fields to a Type = Currency. For fields that have a standard list of values, you use Type = Picklist. And, speaking of picklists, you set up State and Country Picklists. That way, your reps choose from a standardized list of states and countries when they’re entering addresses.