Now that GDPR legislation is in force, your CRM and other IT systems should be now fully compliant. We think that the new rules actually present opportunities to review all of your data processes and ensuring everything is clean and organised.
This article will explore some of the ways you can reduce future headaches and produce accurate reporting by managing your data quality.
Duplication problems
A persistent problem that customers report to us is that they have duplicated records. This can happen for a variety of reasons: a bad import, CRM users adding a new user, not realising they have been already created.
Dirty data will cost you
If you were to create a direct mailing campaign, this will cost you for print and postage for each person. In this example, the cost per person is £1 and you would like to send this campaign to 5000 subscribers. However, dirty data is at 30% (outdated, missing information, duplicates) which would mean you are already wasting £1500. Suddenly your ROI is negative before you have even started!
If you were to follow up this campaign with a phone call or a personalised email, you are wasting your staffs time (and money) on top of this.
You might think simply merging the two or more duplications of a contact, account or lead record is the solution but this can also cause problems. For example, their consent preferences may be different on each of the duplications, and therefore a merge could have a user consented to incorrect communications. Breaking your GDPR compliance.
How do you start managing your data quality?
Reporting
Untangling your dirty data may seem daunting but the first step you should take it understand the scale of the problem by organising a data quality report in your database.
Be careful purchasing contact lists
We see this a lot - an organisation wants to increase their leads and decides to buy a list of potential new customers. The only problem is that they are filled with old records, duplications, incorrect information. We suggest you avoid these like the plague.
Review your data processes
Ensure that your employees are properly trained and using best practice data entry methods so that they are filling the correct fields, with the appropriate data. If you have new employee's, don't let them slip the net - ensure they are trained from the start or face having gaps in your companies data.
Automate removing contact duplications
With a larger database, you will inevitably be faced with duplications. At this point manually removing contacts from your CRM will be time-consuming and increasingly difficult. Most CRM's will enable you to set up custom rules so that duplications can be deleted.
Ask for external support
if your organisation is struggling to get to grips with managing your data, and require some training or consultancy - reach out to a CRM partner to help get your organisation back on track. The cost of dirty data can lead to added costs, inaccurate reports, poor communications, and risk becoming non-compliant with GDPR.
If this applies to your organisation, please get in touch with us. As specialists in Dynamics 365 and SAGE, we can put you back on the right path again.
