High Quality Business Decision Making Absolutely Depends on High Quality Salesforce Data

The Salesforce platform is designed to be the repository of a business’s data and information. It serves users in a diverse range of business functions—marketing, sales, and customer success. Operations and R&D can derive insights from the company’s Salesforce knowledge base to transform and grow. “The 360-degree view of the customer” provides limitless value to a business.

At the core of every successful business is its strategy development and decision making abilities, across all of these functions, but especially in company leadership. And those abilities depend on analyzing data and information. As Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president and global head of research at Gartner, Inc. has said: “Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.”

In other words, the engine cannot operate without refined oil. The analysis for sound strategy and decision making starts with high quality data. Without it, the engine/business sputters and dies.

Assessing the Quality of Data Used to Set the Direction of the Business

Even the best of data can degenerate over time, especially contact data. Today, people move on or move around more than in the past. B2B customers (companies) also transform more rapidly. These external realities are out of the control of a business. However, some internal activities businesses can control could be sources of poor data quality:

• Does the business have a controlled and uniform process for all users to follow when new records are created? Different people may use different processes, creating a host of problems across the entire data set.
• Existing records also require a plan for repair and maintenance. Over time, existing data does not age gracefully, becoming invalid or fragmented by incompleteness or duplicity.

Admins need to develop a plan to address the above sources, because Admins are responsible for the health of the Salesforce platform, including data quality. This effort must also involve and empower the day-to-day Salesforce users.

In addition, besides negatively impacting strategy and decision making, these causes of poor data quality affect various other types of data within the business:

• High quality external (customer) records is required to support customer conversion and retention for revenue generation
• Accurate and complete internal (business) data is needed to achieve proper operational performance.

Salesforce Tools for Improving Data Quality Aren’t Ideal

Certainly, a Salesforce Admin’s plan for elevating data quality, and therefore strategy and decision making, should target user processes for newly created and existing data used across the organization. Enforcing data validation rules and removing duplicate or fragmented data would be a good place to start.

Unfortunately, the default Salesforce tools in these areas simply aren’t sufficient. They lack flexibility and customization for Admins to create unique solutions to the business’s particular data issues. Simply put the default tools are unable to achieve the needs for every type of organization.

In addition, Salesforce users who create and maintain the data are the ones closest to data and how it is used. They are in the best position to resolve data problems, once the Admin has established the uniform processes. After all, the Admin is the platform expert, and the users are the records experts.

Data Quality Helper App Expands Salesforce Functionality

The Salesforce-native free app, Data Quality Helper from Passage Technology, was designed specifically to address these gaps in improving data quality. Admins benefit from expanded functionality that puts them in charge of how processes are optimized. Users are empowered and given an important role in improving their data. The app works in two ways:

• Enhanced Validation Rules — The app allows the establishment of special data validation rules for creating or updating records, so a more uniform process is used and over time higher quality data is achieved. Admins can custom-set each rule’s triggering criteria. It can run before or after a save, or prevent or allow a save. Admins can tailor the warning message displayed when each rule is not followed. It’s all in the Admin’s control. Then, users are alerted and empowered to properly create or update the records based on the established data rule parameters. Learn more >
• Duplicate Data Identification and Resolution — The app makes it easy to eliminate and/or merge duplicate records. With a more complete and valid data set, users relying on the data avoid confusion and errors. Once again, Admins can employ greater flexibility and customization for resolving the problem of duplicates. Admins can adjust the sensitivity matching for duplicates and  set the criteria triggering duplicate identification. Users are alerted and empowered to pick and merge the desired data from any of the duplicate records into one better, updated record.  Learn more >

In addition, a Lightning Web Component can be set up to provide an org-wide view of all identified data problems of either type, to help comprehensively address them. The app is available on the Salesforce AppExchange.

Poor quality data damages the return on investment in the Salesforce platform. Data quality problems can not only slow down a business’s ascent, but also could result in its terminal decline. Properly optimized CRM data can be translated to valuable information, which then forms the basis for actionable organizational insights—not only for external prospect/customer interaction, but also for internal strategy formulation.

Ultimately, poor data quality prevents the development of a sound business strategy that creates growth and informs decision making throughout the entire organization. Can your business afford to let the problem of poor data quality go unaddressed? Can you?.

Learn more about Data Quality Helper or schedule a demo/consult today.

Data Quality Helper Premium features

Upgrade to Data Quality Helper Premium Edition for unlimited enhanced data validation rules, unlimited duplicate resolution rules, and priority support, plus all of the features in the Free Edition.