Unlock business potential – with new structures and better data quality

Spring brings new life to everything, it sprinkles the magic of a new beginning, transformation and growth and invites us to a big clean-up. With new energy and a fresh tailwind, it’s now the ideal time not only to dust off your home, but also to free your business environment and IT landscape.

Storage of unnecessary and obsolete data, outdated documents or useless functions and inefficient processes inhibit productivity, impede relationship management and disrupt efficient working. This is why it‘s important to pay regular attention to 'data and CRM hygiene', as we all know that a well-maintained CRM is a must for successful customer service.

Let's swing the digital broom and take the following 5 steps together:

What to expect in this article

Step 1: Review and requirements analysis

Step 2: Updating and cleansing of data

Step 3: Process optimization

Step 4: Tools & technology

Step 5: Culture & Mindset

Before you go straight to the clean-up and start with the (data) cleansing and updating, a review and requirements analysis is necessary. Today, companies can collect and access to more data than ever before, but not all of it is really useful. Before you start cleaning up data and files, you’d better check which types of information are relevant for your company and which processes may need to be optimised.

Recommendations:

Take a holistic view of your processes and the required data and scrutinize the following:

• Relevance: What data is actually relevant for your company to design processes efficiently, to inspire your customers with the best service and to help you make the right decisions? For example, do you still need fax numbers?
• Completeness & consistency: Is all the necessary information stored in your database? And does data from different systems match?
• Comprehensibility: Is your data clearly interpretable?
• Degree of digitalization: Is all the required data and information available digitally or are you still using paper documents?
• Retention period: Has the expiry date of addresses already passed? According to the GDPR, there are guidelines that clearly describe data retention. Define a storage period, e.g. based on the legitimate interest.
• Protection: Which data accesses are necessary and do your users have the appropriate user rights to view data?

Identify data sources, recognize data quality problems and prioritize the data to be processed.

• Take a look at filters, functionalities, dashboards and interfaces and ask yourself whether they fully meet your company's needs or whether they require optimization.
• Evaluate the relevance and quality of the available reports and dashboards.
• Involve your employees to improve the effectiveness of processes, dashboards and the user-friendliness of your CRM solution, because they know the individual requirements and performance best.
• Review your measures to comply with the GDPR standards and check your security guidelines to protect yourself against cyber attacks. Please see also the recommendations on our cyber security website.

CRM implementation tip:

• Assess your level of digitalization: With just a few clicks, you can determine the CRM maturity level in your company and discover new strategic development potential: CRM maturity wheel with the digital check.

A CRM system should help to manage your customer data efficiently and provide a 360°-view of the customer. Therefore: well-maintained data instead of digital 'dead bodies'. Unusable data inhibits the performance of your CRM solution and can lead to incorrect decisions that could have a negative impact on relationships with your customers and prospects.

Recommendations:

Remove unnecessary data as a team because working together is faster and more fun:

• Merge duplicates.
• Correct typos or incorrect contact information.
• Complete incomplete data.
• Delete outdated information; this includes, for example, addresses that you have not been in contact with for years.
• Empty your digital recycling bin.
• Clear out your e-mail inbox.
• Implement a clearly defined data erasure concept and introduce an automated workflow for regular data dust removal.
• Document processes and provide assistance for data entry, ideally directly in the CRM.

CRM implementation tips:

• To keep cleaning costs low, you should avoid errors right from the start: In the video tutorial Improving data quality quickly simple and fast, we show you how you can easily create, actively check and efficiently correct your contacts with CAS CRM.
• Predefined dashboards and checklists are helpful for successful data maintenance in order to clean up incorrect data quickly. We'll show you how our CRM +AIA® solutions make it easy for you to design automation and notification services for better data quality: Date maintenance made easy: Address and data quality.