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Managing customer relationships in your CRM system includes managing your key business data. Dynamics CRM is an enterprise system that, by its very nature, will have many hands utilizing the data. This will inevitably put your system at risk for data integrity issues.
You’ve probably heard the acronym GIGO (Garbage in, Garbage Out). While this term goes back to the classic age of computing, it still holds true today. Garbage in makes your data dirty. Dirty data as can lead to a diseased CRM system. And while BroadPoint Technologies has “cured” diseased CRM systems, the advice we give to our clients time and again is that prevention is the best cure.
Dirty data can be defined in three ways:
CRM Data Integrity will address Contact Information, one of the most critical pieces of customer data in common to your CRM system. Contact Information includes:
Contact data fields hold the fundamental connection points with your customers or constituents. Why are they notoriously difficult to manage?
First and foremost is their volatility. Contact information is constantly being updated. Secondly, almost all of these data fields are text fields and, as such, require users to hand key the data, making them prone to errors in both style and syntax. We have found that unless you have a strong business process in place for managing your Contact Information, you will continue to be plague by inconsistent data.
While Dynamics CRM has a rich set of tools to manage your data, there are no set-it-and-forget-it fixes. It requires routine checkups and supervision. Formulating your data management plan requires commitment on the part of your CRM Administrator and “power users” to make data integrity a part of their day-to-day responsibilities.
Apply Appropriate Security Roles
Not everyone should have the ability to update key business data. Dynamics CRM allows you to apply permissions to view, create, edit and delete records in CRM. Make sure your users have the appropriate settings so they can perform their jobs, but keep your customer facing data locked down to a select few that can be trusted to keep the data consistent and up-to-date.
Assign a Data Gatekeeper (or Gatekeepers)
By assigning certain users to be a single point of entry of Contact Information such as address and job title changes will allow you to create a formal channel for submitting data changes. This can be as simple as a formal Email queue requesting an update to CRM
Formatting Conventions
Enter your Contact Information exactly as it appears on your customer or constituent’s website, business cards, or email signatures. When it comes to names, job titles, and credentials, what they have on their business cards or email signatures is how they wish to be addressed. Adhere to these and make sure your CRM Form contains the data fields you need to properly address this data.
Employ Data Validation
Your system can be integrated with a wide variety of input masks and address validation tools to maintain consistent formats for addresses, telephones, Emails, and Job Titles, both international and domestic. This can alleviate user error and provide feedback if the data does not conform to your organizations formatting conventions.
Audit Your Customer Facing Data
Sometimes “locking down” CRM just doesn’t cut it. If your organization requires more agility, implement data auditing. We can help you implement data auditing so you will always know who changed what and when, while preserving historical data in you CRM System. If changes need to be reverted, auditing allows for automated data recovery.
Integrate Your Data
No one knows their Contact Information better than the contact themselves. The best way to ensure your Contact Information is consistent and up-to-date is by integrating your data with other systems. Many clients have implemented customer portal, web store, and financial system integrations so that any updates made in any given system will propagate to CRM. This can further enhance your business process for a single point of data entry.
Perform Routine Scrubbing and De-Duplication
Despite the best efforts of your data management plan, you will always find exceptions. Mistakes will be made, duplicate records will be created. With Dynamics CRM you can easily create weekly exception reports to identify and update incomplete records, run weekly duplicate detection jobs and merge any duplicates. Make sure that this task is a part of your Data Gatekeeper’s weekly duties.
While the above steps will help get your CRM system started on the road to recovery, they are certainly not exhaustive. Each organization has its own unique challenges. If you are having data issues that require expert medical attention, give us a call.
Look for Part Two of Keeping Your Microsoft Dynamics CRM System Free of Dirty Data, where we’ll discuss appropriate data types, form design, data entry automation, and exception reporting.
Posted by Michael Dodd on Wed - Jun 02, 2010 at 10:58 am EDT
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