Making bulk updates to your Salesforce records can be time-intensive and complicated without the right tools. Properly managing your important data, including your company’s accounts, leads, contacts, and opportunities, is essential for fostering a loyal customer base and driving revenue.
That being said, your team must find effective, efficient solutions for making mass changes to support optimized operations and thrive.
Explore how to mass update records in Salesforce and some helpful solutions to streamline the process with this guide.
Mass updating records in Salesforce
Making bulk updates to records in Salesforce can help your business achieve greater efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness. Explore a few key scenarios when making mass changes may be necessary for your company:
- Standardization: Your business may want to standardize its records for uniformity to combat unorganized—and hard-to-use—data. Consistent data formatting across all your fields, including phone numbers or letter capitalizations, allows you to improve reporting accuracy, facilitate better database searchability, and enhance data analysis operations for optimized decision-making.
- Data cleanup: Conducting regular data cleanup activities is essential for combating discrepancies and inaccuracies that could mislead your business. Correcting errors, removing redundancies, and ridding your system of outdated insights helps your company ensure your records are as reliable and accurate as possible (especially if you’re able to do so en masse.)
- Compliance requirements: Businesses may also need to make bulk changes to their records in Salesforce to meet industry-specific consumer data regulations. Mass updates may be necessary to support enhanced data protection measures or update consent preferences. Proactively addressing your company’s compliance standards is key to mitigating potential risks, safeguarding customer data, and avoiding legal consequences.
- Targeted marketing: Another reason your company may need to perform mass record updates is to support targeted marketing campaigns in Salesforce. If you’re looking to successfully segment lists, personalize customer communication, or facilitate tailored offerings based on customer preferences, your business’s records must be current and accurate. You can improve your campaign’s return on investment and effectiveness by updating records to reflect the latest insights.
- System upgrades: Mass updates are often necessary if your business integrates new functionalities or system upgrades to the Salesforce platform. You may need to make changes to ensure your existing records align with your new processes. Bulk updates can enable a smoother transition when migrating data or changing configurations.
- Workflow automation: Businesses that want to leverage workflow automation must make bulk updates to their Salesforce records based on predefined criteria or triggers. Automating repetitive processes can accelerate response times, boost efficiency, and reduce manual errors. Workflow automation with bulk updates ultimately supports better productivity and operational effectiveness.
- Customer communications: Another common situation that requires mass updates to Salesforce records is ensuring effective customer communications. Your business needs accurate, up-to-date contact information, communication preferences, and statuses to support effective and relevant customer interactions. Uniform, organized data makes it easier to deliver targeted messages that inspire higher engagement levels and help your company establish stronger, more loyal relationships with its target audience.
- Performance optimization: Mass updating records in Salesforce supports streamlined processes and optimized database queries necessary for overall performance optimization. Bulk changes are integral to maintaining the highest-performing Salesforce environment that ultimately supports greater business agility and growth.
Common challenges and risks of a Salesforce bulk update
Performing bulk updates to your business’s Salesforce records can present a few challenges, including:
Data integrity issues
When making mass updates to your records, executing the process carefully and properly is essential. One potential risk of bulk changes is inadvertently introducing inconsistencies or errors to your data, causing inaccuracies that can negatively impact decision-making.
Another challenge is ensuring you’ve adequately backed up your records in case of data loss. Accidental deletions, overwrites, or alterations can occur during the process, so securely saving your important system data is essential.
User adoption hurdles
Another common issue when introducing significant updates to your Salesforce records is user adoption. Your team and stakeholders may require training and instruction to ensure they understand the updates, their purpose, and how they will impact daily activities or workflows. If your team is not well-versed in these processes, they may impose additional challenges like decreased productivity or manual errors.
System performance impact
When performing bulk updates to your records, the large-scale changes can potentially slow Salesforce performance and strain your system resources. This may result in timeouts, slow response times, and system disruptions for users accessing the platform at that time.
Slow system performance can impact your team’s overall productivity and ability to serve customers efficiently, potentially impacting your company’s reputation and bottom line.
Audit trail maintenance
Businesses should track all changes made throughout a bulk update for auditing purposes. A detailed and comprehensive audit trail is essential for meeting compliance standards and staying accountable. However, companies may encounter hurdles if they do not have adequate tools for logging changes and documenting robust updates.
Best practices for mass updating records in Salesforce
During a Salesforce mass update, your business can benefit from following a few best practices for ensuring data integrity and accuracy:
Review validation rules
Before performing bulk updates, review your existing validation rules and ensure they align with the changes you are about to employ. You may need to modify rules that could hinder the update process and wreak havoc on your data.
You can also leverage field dependencies in the validation rules to ensure data integrity across related fields when making mass changes that could impact multiple fields simultaneously.
Establish duplicate management techniques
Duplicate data can negatively impact your insights and decision-making, so it is essential to clean them up before making mass changes. Use a duplicate detection tool or the data reports in Salesforce to identify and merge these records. Tackling this task before making bulk changes will minimize the risk of introducing new duplicate data during the update.
Ensure you merge duplicates carefully to avoid losing critical data or negatively impacting other records or processes.
Test updates in a Salesforce Sandbox
Another best practice for bulk updating Salesforce records is testing the mass update before deployment. You can use a Salesforce Sandbox environment to safely and securely validate the impact of your changes on a particular set of records without risking live data.
You can perform sample data testing and verify the accuracy of the updates, the performance implications, and any unexpected outcomes. Sandboxes are an incredible tool for combatting errors and ensuring your changes benefit your data management processes.
Preparing for a mass update in Salesforce
Preparing for a bulk update is essential for ensuring the most effective and secure process possible for your records and business operations. Explore the following tips for a successful mass update in Salesforce:
1. Ensure a proper data backup
Backing up your data is an essential part of a successful bulk update. Perform a full data export to create a copy of your records and configurations before getting started. You can implement scheduled backups of your Salesforce data to ensure the most recent changes are included and can be restored.
Store your backup in a secure location with restricted access to prevent unauthorized users from making changes or deleting data.
2. Prioritize robust security measures
Data security is critical to preparing for a mass update. Review and adjust all user permissions to ensure your sensitive customer data is safe during the update process. Keep a detailed audit log to track all changes and identify who modified what records and when. Data encryption tools can provide additional protection from unauthorized users and cybercriminals.
3. Analyze data to select records
Your business will also benefit from analyzing your existing data to identify any inconsistencies or patterns that may require updating. Define your filtering criteria and use that to determine the subset of records you’ll change. You can use user reports to identify the records that meet your bulk update criteria, enabling easier selection and verification before the update.
Common tools to update Salesforce records in mass
Businesses can take a few approaches to updating their Salesforce records in bulk. Some strategies are easier and require less work than others. Explore the following common methods:
Data Loader
Data Loader is an external client application that your business can use for mass data export and import processes. You can use this tool to import or export up to 5 million records. However, there are a few drawbacks to keep in mind. It is best suited for smaller-scale updates. Data Loader also offers limited flexibility and requires users to format the data before loading it into the Salesforce software.
List Views
Users can also mass update records in Salesforce Lightning Experience using list views. You can view, edit, prioritize, sort, create and analyze your records from this page. A major downside of this method is the platform restricts the ability to sort list views if you have over 2 million Salesforce records. You also cannot sort by encrypted fields, and your list views will not automatically update after you’ve made inline edits. Text fields may also show numbers out of order, and your location determines the sort order, further complicating your user experience.
Data Import Wizard
Another way to mass update records in Salesforce without Data Loader tools is using the Salesforce Data Import Wizard. You can import up to 50,000 records at one time with this in-browser tool. Businesses can also update their organization’s contacts, accounts, and leads. However, this solution does not allow you to import Cases and Opportunities or to delete unwanted records. Users are also unable to export data and must find alternative solutions.
Third-party data management tools
One of the best Salesforce mass editor solutions is using a third-party data management tool, like Validity’s data cleansing tool.
Validity DemandTools® helps your organization efficiently update your Salesforce records in bulk. It automatically standardizes, dedupes, and assigns records as they enter the system through end user entry, spreadsheets, or integrations. You can rely on this tool for report-ready data and streamlined massed modification to easily apply changes across your datasets.
Advanced mass updating with Validity DemandTools
Validity DemandTools is the ultimate Salesforce data cleansing solution. It is a comprehensive suite of tools specifically designed to enhance and streamline your data management. Its user-friendly interface makes bulk record updates simple. You can configure update settings for specific records, define your update rules, and preview the changes before applying them to ensure they are correct and align with your unique report requirements.
Here are some key advantages of using DemandTools for your business:
Save time
DemandTools enables your business to manipulate your Salesforce data with greater control and efficiency. Your team can save valuable time and energy they would otherwise spend updating individual records on outdated spreadsheets. Instead, your company can use DemandTools to quickly make bulk updates across your organization while maintaining standardized data.
With our mass modification solution, you can apply uniform updates across your business’s datasets in significantly less time while ensuring quality. Plus, users can leverage saved processes to support automation and reuse, eliminating the need for manual interventions.
Leverage data cleansing and standardization
By standardizing data formats and combatting Salesforce record inaccuracies with advanced data cleansing tools, DemandTools supports seamless bulk updates. It prioritizes data integrity and ensures your insights are always up-to-date, consistent, and reliable. This helps your business minimize the risk of errors that can negatively impact your operations and allows for more informed decision-making.
Proper data cleansing and standardization are essential for supporting effective data management strategies.
Enhance accuracy
DemandTools also boosts report accuracy, giving your business more confidence when performing mass updates. Your customer relationship management (CRM) solution receives data in various formats from multiple sources. DemandTools automatically standardizes, dedupes, and assigns your records as the system collects them. It gives users greater confidence in their data, knowing the system resolves errors and supports optimal data quality. This solution also enhances accuracy by providing a detailed Audit Log of user actions to support greater insight and transparency.
Enjoy mass update automation
A significant advantage of using DemandTools is saving processes for simplified reuse and automation. You can automate the following:
- Modifications
- Standardization
- Record ownership management
…and much more.
Your business can eliminate manual intervention and execute mass changes effortlessly. Automation also reduces the likelihood of manual report errors, which supports greater productivity, data quality, and optimized data management processes.
Recurring automation of your business’s data quality routines ensures your team is always working with the most accurate, report-ready data.
Streamline mass updates with the help of Validity DemandTools
If your company is ready to simplify and enhance bulk record updates in Salesforce, turn to the solutions from Validity.
With DemandTools, mass record modification, standardization, and formatting are easy. Your business can clean its data more efficiently and effectively. Our solutions also help you leverage automation to save time and energy on bulk updates while ensuring data quality and accuracy. Repeatable processes enhance how you manage every aspect of your data and eliminate the need to make record-by-record changes.
Are you ready to learn more about the advantages of Validity’s data cleansing tools for Salesforce? Start your DemandTools trial today.