Data in the CRM application is the lifeblood of a successful implementation. The benefits of CRM cannot be realized without relevant and current data.
Typical data management tasks are:
- Managing duplicate data
- Ensuring that data is correct, up to date and comprehensive to meet business needs
- Maintaining data integrity when sourcing data from other applications
- In general data quality management encompasses accuracy, completeness and currency (how up to date is the data)
To limit bad quality data from entering the crm application do the following:
Identify each point of data entry; this could be manually by users, third party applications or databases, or other internal systems.
For each source assess the data quality level, and identify the specific problem areas.
For users this could be:
- Lack of training
- Ambiguous field names
- Lack of data validation
There may be different reasons where data is sourced from third party and internal systems.
Zaheer Ismail