How to keep data clean in Salesforce?

Did you know that the dirty data costs US companies $15 million a year on average?

The dirty data is there in every organization. It not only subdues employees’ productivity but also impacts decision-making. For example, your sales rep is trying to reach out to the customer but the contact information is incorrect. Your entire organization is going ahead with the strategic plans made from outdated or incorrect information.

This poor quality data costs you, affects your team’s efficiency, and damages your relationship with your customers eventually hurting your business’ reputation.

How did you get dirty data?

There are many ways to get dirty data. For example,

• Importing the data that doesn’t abide by a structure or formatting rules.
• Importing the data from multiple sources that don’t abide by a structure or formatting rules.
• Importing, editing, or deleting the data without any streamline processes.
• Importing data without any goal in place.
• Importing incomplete data.

How to keep your data clean in Salesforce?

1. Assess your data’s health

The dirty data is everywhere. The first step to eliminate it is to assess the current situation of the organization. Evaluate your organization’s current data and the process of capturing it. You can do that by asking certain questions, such as

• Do you have any duplicate data? If yes, how much?
• What is considered complete data in your organization?
• Do you have any incomplete data? If yes, how much?
• How much inaccurate data do you have?
• Do you want your records merged? If yes, on what basis?
• What are your formatting rules or validation rules? Have you defined them already?

2. Remove the duplicate data using Cloudingo

A famous deduplicate app, Cloudingo not only eliminates the duplicity in your data but can also update records in mass with customized rules, schedule automated cleanup, and delete the inactive records. With 104 reviews (most of which are 5 stars) on the AppExchange, Cloudingo analyses the entire data in your Salesforce org with its customized rules and identifies duplicates or stale records for you to clean. It does all of this inside of the application.

3. Improve your data with data.com

After cleaning our data, removing the duplicates, and merging the necessary, the next step is to improve or enrich your records with accurate and updated information. Data.com Clean does exactly that! It is a Salesforce tool and its flagship products are Data Clean and Prospect. It helps you analyze the quality of your data with ‘Data Clean’ and enables you to complete the incomplete records from the trusted sources with ‘Prospect’.

Maintain the quality of your data

Cleaning your data is not easy. It is not something that can be achieved in one go rather there should be a streamlined process to keep it going. In simple words, it is not a destination but a journey. So, to maintain the quality of your data you need to do the following.

• Make a process of data cleansing
• Support is with required technical measures
• Train your organization on data cleansing
• Complement your team on doing it

Outsource Salesforce have served many clients in implementing data cleansing tools in their Salesforce. Do let us know if you are facing the same issues.