Improve sales data quality in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

For successful customer relationship management, as well as for the acquisition of new customers, a high sales data quality is indispensable. The more accurate and consistent your sales data quality is in CRM, the easier it is to retain your customers. Therefore, just take a look at the following tips and tricks, which you can use to influence the quality of your data, as well as the data integrity.

Acting preventively

If you want to increase both the reliability and quality of your CRM data, taking preventive action is the key to success. When implementing the CRM system, make sure that only correct data is entered into the system and that no important details are overlooked. This can significantly reduce the risk of problems later on due to erroneous data. Instead of spending a lot of time cleaning up erroneous data, you should simply use accurate and well-defined data from the start to achieve high sales data quality. The following tips will help you succeed:

1. Grant the various users access only to the data that is relevant to their daily work. If only a selected group of users has access to certain records, this helps to avoid incorrect data.
2. Your CRM system should be equipped with a duplicate record detection feature. Be sure to use this feature to prevent duplicate entry of the same records. Of course, you can define the rules that govern data collection yourself.
3. To ensure that any data can become part of the database, specific CRM data validation rules apply. Make sure that you define the type of data required for each input field as precisely as possible. While some fields require a numerical value, a date is required as valid information in other areas, for example.
4. You can also use a method that makes certain data mandatory before a complete data set can be transferred to the system.

While these preventive measures are extremely important for maintaining the integrity of your data, certain rules apply to the processing of the data that already exists in order to ensure a high level of sales data quality on an ongoing basis. This step is also known as CRM data management.

CRM data management for high sales data quality

When new information is entered into the CRM system, you have the option to change or edit the data you already have. However, you should keep in mind that the quality of sales data can also deteriorate as a result of such processing. To ensure that you do not have to clean up the data that has been changed later, you should define appropriate rules for this process. These rules specify who is allowed to edit the data that already exists, under what circumstances, and at what time. It’s a good idea to keep the following CRM data management guidelines in mind:

1. Only grant the appropriate data editing rights to users with a need for updated data in a specific area. By restricting access rights and strict rules for data processing, errors can be avoided from the outset.
2. Data auditing at the input field level can be very useful for some organizations. If you use the auditing function, this means that you can change the data that has not been processed correctly back to the original data. Nevertheless, this tool should only be used sparingly. Take all necessary preventive measures to avoid having to resort to the auditing function as little as possible.
3. In addition, you should define the rules that apply when processing the data as precisely as possible. This is important to ensure data integrity. For example, you could consider an approval process.

As you can see, data management plays an important role in maintaining data integrity. By following these guidelines, you may be able to identify broken data sources early on and take the necessary corrective actions to address this issue. Of course, we also offer you some useful tips on how best to proceed when correcting incorrect data.

Correct incorrect data

Data maintenance is required when erroneous data has been discovered. However, you should not only replace the erroneous data with accurate data, but also take all the preventive measures necessary to prevent such erroneous data from finding its way into the system in the first place. Learning from one’s own mistakes is the key to being able to avoid erroneous data as completely as possible in the future. You may want to follow these recommendations in this process to increase your sales data quality:

1. The special detection feature allows you to merge duplicate records into a single record. The end user who enters the data into the system is therefore faced with the decision of whether to continue with the input or to end it in favor of the already existing data set. This is extremely important to avoid duplicates.
2. You should perform data cleansing at regular intervals. This also means that the integrity of the data can be guaranteed in the long term.
3. Regular backups are essential. This ensures that you are covered in case of a problem. Make sure that your backup allows for a complete recovery of the data.

As you can see, all of these processes go hand in hand to ensure high overall data integrity from start to finish. Make sure you take each of these steps regularly to get the most out of your data.

Learn more about how to ensure sales data quality and how you can use your data for customer retention, customer acquisition, and even in-depth analysis. Just take a look at what features Microsoft has to offer in these application areas.