New Years Resolution Idea - Clean Data

As I've been considering my own New Years Resolutions, I started thinking about what one client was thinking about for 2009. I was asked to put together my thoughts for a data maintenance ‘ritual’ for their new Salesforce system to ensure that they keep their data clean. Fantastic!! It's no new news that working out and eating healthy help you function in life better; similarly, it's old news that clean data helps your organization operate more effectively. Nevertheless, the beginning of the year serves as a new reminder to get in shape. I thought I'd share my quick list culled from various sources here. Would love any other suggestions.

Daily/Weekly

• Back-up database. Set up an automated backup to be generated that can be download weekly.
  
• Duplicate check. Check “Demand Tools” reports regularly to check for duplicates and other redundant data.
  
• Scan for junk leads. Doing regular scans for junk Lead records that are filled with gibberish values from sources like online forms.
  
• Check For & Tackle Incomplete Records. While most CRMs can validate or require certain data fields, it’s not always easy to ensure a value for every field at the time when a record is generated. For example, if staff import a list of event attendees with only name, title and phone numbers, it has very little value if it needs to be used in an email or direct mail campaign. While appending missing data is may require a lot of manual effort which will feel time consuming, it is a necessary evil to ensure that you have ‘actionable’ data.
  
• Returned mail. Update contact records when mail is returned. [Determine policy…what happens? Alert to owner? Purge? Phone call?]
  

Weekly/Monthly

• Run executive reports weekly/monthly. Use key organizational reports to spot poor data (as well as poor performance). Data that doesn’t match expectations are either an indicator of poor data management or poor performance by the individual.
  
• Scan communications lists. Review lists (reports) that School Volunteers will use for communications (email, invitation lists, etc.). Is there missing data? Is data in the right format?
  
• Run exceptions reports monthly. Run reports run monthly to find records with incorrect picklist values.
  

Quarterly

• Post email cleaning. Use tools in VerticalResponse to identify Returned Mail or Bounced emails so that bad lead records can be updated/purged.
  
• Delete or archive old data. Organizations merge, get acquired or shut down, contacts change addresses, change jobs, move within an organization …CRM data does expire. This is an area which is not easily automated and requires investment of time and energy. The more regularly you check for expired data, the healthier your data will be. According to one source, a database unchecked for an entire year can see as much as 30% expired data.
  
• Data enrichment. Regularly ask what additional data in each record would help staff do more and have better insight. Adding political campaign contributions? Adding annual revenues of Community Based Organizations or Foundations?