If you are a new user of Salesforce CRM or have been using it for a while now, it is important to evaluate your data management process and practices. Ensure that you are keen on the upkeep and security of your data. There is every possibility that you may end up in a troublesome situation if something happens to your valuable enterprise data. Evaluate your data management systems and keep the same updated from time to time. Salesforce data is not the responsibility of admins only, but each and every user should also be properly educating about the proper upkeep and safe utilization of data. You should devise and upgrade a strong strategy that ensures optimum data quality. This article will discuss the top data management expert tips to ensure the proper upkeep of data.
Salesforce data management tips
Build a cross-functional team for data governance
As we discussed above, data security is not just the responsibility of the admins. Salesforce data is relied on by various departments in the business. So, when it comes to proper upkeep and security of data, it will be fully covered only if every department takes interest and responsibility for data accuracy and health. So, enterprise database admins and key decision-makers need to create a solid team of representatives from different departments like finance, sales, marketing, products, services, etc. This approach will ensure that your Salesforce data management practices are compliant with the industry specifications and regulations.
Build a proper data security model
Data security of Salesforce can be handling in many different ways. Considering all aspects of security and meeting regulatory compliances can be daunting to the admins, which confuses them as to which approach is most efficient. In the case of Salesforce data security and backup, the best approach to security is to be discussed in the core data governance team, which should be reviewing the data model in practice, the need for metadata backup and security, and identifying the best security model to be adopted.
Salesforce admins can further assess these inputs from the governance team members and then formulate the right approach to protect the sensitive info by ensuring proper access to all users. You must also consider the fact that data security models are not static. You have to review this as frequently as possible, at least once every six months, and accommodate the changes based on the industry regulations and the internal needs.
Ensure data deduplication
Another expert tip on Salesforce data management is to effectively handle data duplication. Data duplication can spoil the objective of any successful Salesforce adoption practices. This undermines the marketing processes and sales efforts of the enterprise teams. It will also skew the pipeline details and may result in all sales executives working on the same lead, leaving a bad impression on the protective customers and devaluing the brand. In order to resolve this challenge, it is important to deduplicate the data at least once monthly after each data loading into Salesforce. Seasoned data admins may also try to implement applications that can deduplicate the data at the import stage. This will also help with a need for salesforce data recovery later.
Standardizing data regularly
Data is gathered every minute by enterprises, which fuels reporting, marketing, sales, product development, and business decision making, etc. if the data elements are not regularly standardized and made free from the fields which capture your data, then later it may be impossible to generate accurate reports. This is one reason why regular data standardization is a necessity. Data standardization is ideally supported with the use of dropdown selection fields wherever possible and running other supportive standardization actions on the basic elements as postal code, state, industry, country, account type, etc. There are many such possibilities when it comes to standardizing the data capturing fields, which will further help organizations better analyze the data for reporting purposes. Each and every time when you come across a data element, consider how it can be reporting in a standardized way.
Have a proper backup plan
This is a key area where the Salesforce admins are encourag to have duplicate copies of data, but in the form of backup to be restoring if and when needed. Most companies have a proper mechanism to constantly manage the data flow into Salesforce, but it is always vulnerable to unplanned data changes and inaccuracies. Overall, it may tend to create some domino effects in terms of data corruption. Every Salesforce admin should be aware and clear about a proper backup strategy, ensuring optimum data protection and instant restoration when needed.
Salesforce has the feature of weekly backup of data, but it is recommending that you use a third party addon tool too to do the backup more frequently as daily or multiple times a day. You can set a custom data backup plan based on the criticality of your data and by considering how much data you can afford to lose in case of a data loss.
Publish your data strategy to users
If you have to enjoy the fullest benefits of Sales force data management, all your users also need to be aware of your data management practices and training for the same. Release easily understandable user guides and instructions for them to follow. Salesforce features field level bubbles for help topics, with which the users quickly get reminders and alerts about the practices on different fields and the data management best practices. Admins can be proactive and run exception reports to identify which fields are not following the set rules and alert the users.
Wrapping things up
Being a Salesforce admin is a highly responsible role where you need to be aware of the latest data management best practices and educate the other users. You may download the white papers and devise strategies to maintain data accuracy and security.