As an IT Director, you are the guarantor of data quality in your company. However, the new CRM project CRM is disrupting your strategy. How can you make sure this new customer relationship management software is populated with high‑quality data? How can you ensure that data quality is maintained over time? Here are a few key answers…
To get started, we recommend that you set up a data repository. The arrival of new software as critical as a CRM is the perfect opportunity to review your processes and the existing data within your organization.
Draw up a detailed inventory and ask yourself a few questions: where does your customer/prospect data come from? Which workflows does it go through? What manual changes are made to it? And so on.
This will allow you to have complete clarity when rolling out your future CRMCRM. Of course, among the data you’ve collected, there’s no requirement to keep everything!
However, “too much data kills the data.” At least at the outset, it’s better to integrate only the essential data and give users time to familiarize themselves with the new process. You can then decide whether it makes sense to add additional processes.
Finally, remember that data quality is often tied to the user experience. If the CRM is not sufficiently user‑friendly, there’s a good chance users won’t make the effort. Make sure the processes you put in place are intuitive and easy to follow. Where possible, structure manual data entry in the CRM using drop‑down lists, check boxes, and so on. This will help ensure a consistent data structure.
If you’d like to go further and have a solid set of specifications for data quality in your future CRM, our Guide to a Successful B2B CRM Project is for you!
