Don’t let poor quality data destroy your CRM system

As many of us already know, businesses nowadays heavily rely on data to meet their objectives. The marketing and sales teams require accurate data so that they can accurately market to customers and close business. On the other side of the coin, businesses that make use of inaccurate data which is shared out across the business can lead to a number of issues such as duplicate data, bad internal comms as well as poor sales figures. In order to combat this in the real world, we need to have a firm understanding of why this happens in the first place. In order to do this, we’ve spoken to our internal CRM team and have collated the most common reasons we see for bad data quality in CRM systems. 

• Poor training: If your employees are not trained in how to input and manage data then they are more likely to make errors. 
• Outdated data: You will find that over time, customer data becomes irrelevant as it isn't up to date anymore. If this data isn’t regularly updated, it means that you are getting inaccurate information which could lead to bad decisions being made. 
• Little or no data checks: Planning and carrying out regular data checks can help to both highlight and correct any errors in your data. If you aren’t doing these regularly, you will start to see more and more errors appearing. 
• No data entry processes: If you don’t have any guidelines on how data should be input into the CRM, you will find that more and more errors occur. 
• Unfinished data entries: If data is missing vital information, it can make it harder to both track and manage customer engagements. 

Do any of the above reasons sound familiar to you? If so, what steps can be taken to keep your data clean across your business? 

Get into place clear and obvious data-entry processes: You need to make sure that these processes are clear and obvious on how data should be added and managed. This will not only help to reduce the amount of errors within your system but will also make sure that data is added consistently in a certain format. 

Take advantage of data validation tools: You will find that many CRM systems come equipped with data validation tools that can help you to quickly find and take action against errors in data as and when it is added. 

Put into action regular data quality checks: Completing these checks on a regular basis will enable you to see and correct data errors. This activity could see you comparing data against other sources, checking data on the spot or using other useful data management tools to keep things tidy. 

Give training to employees around data management: It is vital that all the employees in your business know how to use data and are trained on how to manage it. Not only will this reduce errors but will help to improve data quality. 

Bad customer experiences: Using incorrect customer data can result in poor overall customer experiences. So, if you send out marketing emails to the wrong email or get the customer’s name wrong then they will lose trust in you and your company. 

Next Steps? 

If your business is suffering from bad data, Advantage can work with you to identify and resolve these problems through the use of a tailored strategy to assess why it happens and what practical actions can be taken to enable you to be able to rely on your data going forwards. To get started, give our team of data experts a call now to discuss this in more detail. 

Are you looking to get more practical advice on how to improve the data in your business? This can be achieved if you become a member of our mailing list.