Over my 17 years working with Salesforce, I’ve experienced my fair share of “data nightmares.” Most admins can say the same.
So, let’s sit by the campfire, and I’ll tell you a few of these ghostly horror stories.
The spine-tingling standardization problem
Years ago, I worked for a company that had a problem: They ran their reports and data was mysteriously missing. They simply couldn’t figure out why.
So, I began my ghost hunt by looking at a list of accounts. I noticed that a lot of the state field values on these accounts weren’t standardized. I saw MA, but I also saw Massachusetts, Mass, and Mass., to name a few. To fix this horror, I grabbed my wooden stake. Just kidding! I leaned on my ol’ standby: Validity Demand Tools!
Thanks to the Mass Impact Module and the formulas available in it, I was able to convert all the states into a two-letter, capitalized abbreviation for all the account addresses in a couple of hours. To save you from similar data goblins, the formula looks like this: StateMatchShortName(StateValue,UseFuzzy).
Pro tip: If you ever need to do this to your country field as well, use the formula, “CountryMatchReturnISONumber(CountryValue, UseFuzzy)”. Problem solved!
The monstrous migration
Here’s another one for you: A company I worked for once upon a time had a sister company that was on a proprietary CRM system. The goal was to get them off the legacy system and onto Salesforce.
Now for the scary part: We needed to migrate data—and I mean a lot of relational data.
This time, I had no access to DemandTools. YIKES!
So, I was stuck going through I don’t remember how many spreadsheets. Trying to keep the data relationships intact was a nightmare in itself! I think my vlookups were having vlookups!
You might wonder why I had so many spreadsheets. Unfortunately, it was the only way to get the data out of the other “legacy” system.
Thankfully, this story ends well, too. After several uploads and many more ghoulish days of work than if I had DemandTools, we migrated the other company onto Salesforce successfully.
The terrifying trade show upload
Let’s end on a high note. In this last situation, our sales representatives regularly attended industry trade shows. As a result, the reps brought home spreadsheets filled with leads, which was good for business.
Here’s what will send shivers down your spine: Do you think those spreadsheets were formatted the same so I could upload them right away? If you’ve been in the Salesforce world long enough, you know otherwise. It’s like the data is possessed with a mind of its own.
So, I had to go through each spreadsheet and confirm that I had all the fields needed for the upload to work successfully. Talk about a fever dream—someone wake me from this madness!
Luckily, I had PeopleImport (now available in DemandTools V’s Import module) available to me so I could load those leads without creating more duplicates.
Here’s how we did it:
- We set up each trade show as a campaign in Salesforce.
- PeopleImport allowed me to load the records from the spreadsheet into Salesforce as new leads or update an existing lead or contact, and add them as campaign members to the correct campaign.
The star of this story is PeopleImport, again now available in DemandTools V Import module instead of being a standalone application in the DemandTools suiteWith some minor configuration, the tool easily allowed me to keep my data quality intact and also ensured the leads were attributed to the correct campaign.
Horror story over!
For expert guidance on tackling any “data nightmares” that might pop up in your day-to-day, attend Validity’s recurring webinar series, Data In Sight.
Bill Hare is a guest blogger for Validity. He is 3x Salesforce Certified. Throughout his 10 years of application and operations experience, he has been in a number of roles that allowed him to see many different sides of the Salesforce world.