Posted by Jay Rivard on Thu, Jan 07, 2010
As a Salesforce CRM consultant who is dealing with customer databases on a regular basis, I tend to think in terms of data quality and completeness. One of the key drivers to a successful CRM implementation is to develop meaningful reports for forecasting and other productivity gains your company is looking to realize. But how can you ensure data quality when there are many users using one system?
It would be easy for me to suggest making all fields on a record required and to put in some validation rules in place to ensure that the information is complete. However, this is not realistic because there is a fine line between being able to capture information and being a productive user. So the question then becomes, "How do you get to the point where you can have productivity and complete information?"
The answer lies in coming to a compromise. Management and users need to discuss what is important to them and what is truly practical. Let's take the typical sales role -- sales reps are required to make as many calls as possible but yet still enter information into the database. Ultimately, they're judged by the the amount of business that they bring in during a given period of time. Having said this, you do not want to make the data entry requirements in Salesforce so stringent that they can't be out there face-to-face with your prospects and customers. What you need to do is strike a compromise by having a meeting between management and users. Sometimes these meetings become very heated but they are necessary to get to a point where not only do you get the information that you need but the sales reps also take ownership of the systems because they been involve in the design process.
Posted by Jay Rivard on Tue, Dec 22, 2009
Now that 2010 is upon us this would be a great opportunity to start thinking about the health of your Salesforce CRM database. Over time, databases tend to get fragmented with duplicate records and incomplete information. The result is a loss of productivity due to ineffiencent searches and inaccurate reporting.
Over the past few years I have been evaluating various tools to help with repairing these databases and keep them healthy. One of my favorites is a product called DemandTools from CRM Fusion. DemandTools is like a Swiss Army knife for salesforce.com -- lots of tools to help you maintain your database inculding mass de-duping, lead import, mass effect on fields, and a very nice backup utility which will take the Salesforce structure and data and create an Access database with all the tables in it.
The mass import feature is robust and has come become very handy in helping our customers maintain their databases. The de-duping feature gives the ability to look for duplicates across leads and contacts and merge them. DemandTools gives you the ability to set rules by which to identify duplicates and handles them en masse. I should also mention that there is a tool for performing mass lead conversion as well.
If you are interested in this product and would like a demo for free to contact us and we will set up a time to demo for you.
We hope that you have a very prosperous and profitable new year!