Data is your company’s most valuable asset. How you manage your data plays a big role in determining its quality—and ultimately, its value.
While many CRM users manage their data manually, investing in data management software can significantly benefit your business by saving time, preventing errors, and encouraging users to prioritize data quality.
There’s just one problem: With so many options to choose from, how can you know which one is right for you and your business?
We’re here to help. Let’s review the top four attributes every CRM user should look for in data management software.
User-friendly interface
The quality of your data affects your entire organization.
For example, the sales team relies on high-quality data to create accurate forecasts. The marketing team relies on it to target their campaigns effectively. Finance relies on it to budget properly.
You get the picture.
Since various people throughout your organization work with and rely on the data in your CRM, it’s crucial to invest in data management software that is user-friendly, easy to understand, and as simple as possible for people to work with.
Remember: not everyone in your company is a tech wizard. What a seasoned CRM admin might be able to understand right away could take your less technical staff much longer to get the hang of.
Choosing data management software that is difficult to use means certain staff members may be reluctant to use it. And if they decide to go back to their old ways of doing things, this will compromise the quality of your data in the long term.
So, what makes data management software user-friendly? Look for something with a clean, visually appealing user interface, straightforward navigation, and intuitive grouping of functionality organized by the problems your teams are trying to solve.
Efficient data cleaning
One key component of data management is data cleaning. Data cleaning involves identifying and removing or correcting data errors in your CRM.
Why is this important?
When dealing with relational data, the odds of data errors occurring in your CRM (duplicates, mislabeled data, etc.) will continue to increase over time. These errors can negatively impact your revenue, reputation, and other business activities. Therefore, consistent data cleaning is crucial to maintaining the quality of your data.
Data cleaning is comprised of many different processes, from standardization and deduplication to verification and monitoring. When completed manually, each of these processes can be very tedious and time-consuming for the CRM admin. For this reason, data management tends to take a back seat to other priorities. When the admin can’t keep the data clean, your CRM end users lose productivity as they wade through a sea of questionable data.
Investing in data management software that makes completing these processes as efficient as possible can save time and encourage users to prioritize data quality. Here are a few key features that can increase efficiency:
- Automated processes, such as deduplication, standardization, and modification
- Bulk data verification and deduplication
- Mass modification to standardize or change field values and align record ownership
- Data quality assessment so you know where to focus your efforts
Supports growth
Most organizations share a common goal, and that’s to grow their business.
Growing a business usually involves growth in all areas: the size of the company, the number of customers, the number of products or services offered, etc. As each of these areas grow, so does the amount of data in your CRM.
As more and more data enters your CRM, its quality becomes harder to maintain. Therefore, it’s crucial to look for data management software that provides the tools needed to help you maintain the quality of your data as your business grows over time.
For example, let’s say your company acquires a business. Along with their products or services, their employees, and their strategies, you would also acquire their data. Score! But without the right tools to support this growth, you risk compromising the data’s integrity.
Invest in data management software that can help you maintain the integrity of data while moving it in and out of your CRM. Specific features may include:
- An undelete function that lets you recover information accidentally deleted during the migration process
- Pre-import deduplication to protect your CRM from duplicate records caused by combining business systems during an acquisition
Customizable
No two businesses are exactly alike. When it comes to managing data, what works for one business may not work for another.
Investing in software that takes a “one size fits all” approach to data management can severely limit your capabilities and prevent you from fully leveraging the data in your CRM.
Therefore, it’s important to look for software that is customizable.
For example, DemandTools from Validity contains modules (Dedupe, Reassign, Assess, etc.) that complement each other but work separately. This gives organizations the ability to easily customize the platform for their needs.
Make sure your data remains your most valuable asset
There are plenty of data management platforms on the market for you to choose from, but not all of them will be right for your business. Choosing software that checks each of these boxes is the best way to ensure you’re making the right decision for your business.
One solution that meets these criteria is DemandTools, from Validity. DemandTools is the most versatile and secure data management platform for cleaning and maintaining CRM data in less time, so you always have report-ready data improving the effectiveness of your revenue operations. To learn more about how DemandTools can help you be the guardian of your most valuable business asset, schedule a demo with one of our experts today.