In today’s data-driven world, the ability to maintain clean CRM data is essential for the success of any organization. Poor data quality can cause financial setbacks, contribute to operational inefficiencies, and hamper decision-making. As the saying goes, “garbage in, garbage out.”
No matter how advanced your tools are, if your data is bad, the insights and decisions derived from it will be flawed.
This post will cover:
- The impacts of bad data
- How to identify bad data
- Leveraging Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and third-party tools to maintain clean CRM data
- Why data governance is key to long-term success
Why your CRM data quality matters
Regardless of your company’s size, clean data is critical to efficient operations. For small businesses, accurate data maximizes sales opportunities, while for larger enterprises, clean data prevents errors from compounding into costly issues.
Maintaining data quality ensures that teams work efficiently, reducing wasted time on data cleanup and enabling better decision-making. Clean data is a critical asset that drives growth, customer satisfaction, and operational success.
The cost of bad data
Bad data can impact your organization in several ways:
- Lost Revenue: Inaccurate contact information can lead to missed sales opportunities. Each failed attempt to reach a customer due to outdated data represents lost revenue.
- Compliance Risks: Regulations like GDPR impose penalties for inaccurate or outdated customer data, so data accuracy is essential for compliance.
- Wasted Time and Resources: Employees spend time fixing data errors or updating records, distracting from higher-value tasks.
- Customer Dissatisfaction: Inconsistent customer information results in poor customer experiences.
- Inaccurate Reporting and Forecasting: Bad data skews your reports, leading to misguided business decisions.
How to identify bad data in your CRM
Recognizing the signs of bad data is essential for taking corrective action. Common indicators include:
- Duplicate Records: Multiple records for the same person or company.
- Missing Data: Blank or incomplete fields like contact information or company names.
- Outdated Information: Data that hasn’t been updated (e.g., old phone numbers).
- Inconsistent Formats: Discrepancies in formats (e.g., phone numbers or addresses).
- Invalid Data: Incorrect entries like non-existent area codes or invalid email addresses.
- Unlinked Records: Disconnected records, such as contacts without associated accounts.
- High Bounce Rates: High email bounce rates could indicate incorrect or outdated data.
- Conflicting Information: Different records showing conflicting data about the same customer or organization.
By regularly reviewing for these issues, you can catch and correct bad data before it becomes a larger problem.
Common causes of bad data
Data degradation is inevitable, but understanding the causes can help prevent it. Here are some common causes:
- Manual Data Entry Errors: Typos and inconsistencies arise from human input.
- Lack of Standardization: Inconsistent formats (e.g., different address formats) create discrepancies.
- Integrations with External Systems: Different validation standards across systems can introduce errors.
- Outdated Information: Customer details naturally change over time, requiring regular updates.
- Duplicate Records: Without deduplication processes, multiple records for the same entity can accumulate, causing confusion.
How Dynamics 365 helps maintain clean CRM data
Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM offers powerful out-of-the-box features to maintain data accuracy from the start. Features include:
- Duplicate Detection: Automatically flags and prevents duplicate records during creation or import.
- Field Validation & Business Rules: Enforces correct data entry, ensuring required fields are completed in the right format.
- Picklists (Choice Fields): Standardizes data entry by offering predefined options for fields like job titles or industries.
- Business Process Flows: Guides users through structured steps to ensure all necessary data is captured.
- Security Roles: Limits who can modify data, ensuring only authorized personnel make changes.
- Data Import Validations: Checks for missing or incorrect data during imports, preventing faulty data from entering the system.
- Email Validation: Ensures only properly formatted email addresses are entered, reducing communication errors.
- Address Suggestion: Suggests and auto-populates addresses in contact, lead, or account forms, integrated with Bing Maps for accuracy.
These built-in features provide a strong foundation for data accuracy and integrity within your CRM system. Want to learn more? Contact us to request a demo of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, a premier CRM solution.
Tools to enhance CRM data cleansing
Beyond Dynamics 365 CRM’s built-in features, the following third-party tools can further improve data quality:
- Dun & Bradstreet Optimizer: Enriches CRM records with up-to-date information from the Dun & Bradstreet database, ensuring accuracy and completeness. Learn more.
- Hoovers Integration: Integrates robust business intelligence on millions of companies, enriching CRM data with comprehensive company profiles. Learn more.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator: Integrates directly with Dynamics 365 CRM, providing insights on leads and decision-makers, and ensuring your sales team has the latest information on prospects and customers. Learn more.
- ZoomInfo: Offers detailed contact and company data, enriching CRM records with accurate and comprehensive information for your sales and marketing teams. Learn more.
Regular audits using a combination of Dynamics 365 features and these third-party tools help catch and correct errors before they cause major problems.
The role of data governance
Maintaining clean data isn’t just an IT initiative; it requires a collaborative effort between IT and business stakeholders. Business teams understand the nuances of the data they work with daily, while IT ensures the tools and processes are in place to maintain that data’s integrity. Successful data governance is built on this partnership, where both sides work together to establish clear guidelines for data entry, management, and validation.
Data governance is also an ongoing process of auditing, cleansing, and refining your data strategies. Each step you take toward better data quality—whether it’s enforcing stricter validation rules, creating standardized processes, or conducting regular audits—pays off over time.
Governance is iterative. Each improvement increases the value, reliability, and actionability of your data, ensuring your organization’s long-term success—not just today, but as you scale and introduce advanced tools.
How Boyer can help you maintain clean CRM data
As a Microsoft Dynamics 365 partner, we understand the challenges of maintaining clean CRM data. Whether you’re just starting your data governance journey or looking to improve, we can help with:
- Data Audits: Assess your current data quality, identify issues, and create a plan for improvement.
- Data Cleansing: Assist with deduplication, standardization, and cleaning up historical data.
- Ongoing Governance Support: Develop long-term data governance strategies to maintain clean data as your organization grows.
- Training & Best Practices: Provide training for your teams on data entry best practices and using Dynamic 365’s tools to maintain clean data.
Maintaining clean data in your CRM system is critical to driving business operations and long-term success. By leveraging Dynamics 365 CRM’s out-of-the-box features, integrating third-party tools, and committing to ongoing data governance, you ensure your data remains reliable, actionable, and ready to support your organization’s growth.
