Salesforce CRM is one of the effective tools available in the market for keeping a tab on customer relationships and sales in a business. Good data management in Salesforce provides insight into improving interactions with customers and making business operations easier. In this blog, we will take you through the basic steps that help in managing data effectively in Salesforce.
Step 1: Understand Your Data Model
1.1 Familiarize Yourself with Salesforce Objects
Standard Objects: These are predefined by Salesforce; for example, Accounts, Contacts, leads, and Opportunities.
The flow is from contacts –> Leads –> opportunities.
Accounts should be tagged with contacts because, if you want to see reports from an account’s perspective, that can be viewed.
Custom Objects: It would be created for any specific business requirement.
One custom object can be added as extra field to track some specific field.
If you want to attach some tag to some opportunities, it will help you understand the type of opportunities, such as New Opportunities, Existing Opportunities, or it’s a Renewal
– Relationships: See how different objects are related-like lookups and master-detail.
1.2. Investigate the Schema of Data
– Utilize Salesforce Schema Builder to visualize and understand the relationships between objects and fields.
Step 2: Data Entry and Management
2.1. Data Entry
Manual Entry: Data is inputted into forms and fields within Salesforce.
The cards are usually given by the customer in general at marketing events.
Sometimes from form fill, we get only email id; so we need to find other fields such as first name, last name, and company to have the data inside Salesforce.
– Import Data: One may use Salesforce’s Data Import Wizard or Data Loader for bulk imports.
2.2. Data Validation
Validation Rules: Set rules to make the data accurate to include such aspects as required fields and data formats.
In all mass upload jobs on Salesforce, one needs to check the data quality in advance before uploading into Salesforce.
Error Handling: In case there are errors while entering data or importing, handle accordingly.
The most common kind of errors are email domains, wrong phone numbers, and names of companies. We need to verify it before uploading into Salesforce.com to avoid errors.
2.3 Data Maintenance
Update Records: Periodically update records and correct the data as necessary.
Whenever we have done any form of email campaigns, too many people get bounced, so in that case it’s better to update their emails as they might change to different companies.
– Data Quality: Provide means to ensure integrity of the data, such as duplicate management.
Salesforce can remove the duplicate while loading if the primary field is an email id, then it takes the email id that contains more fields than the other row.
Step 3: Data Integration
3.1. Integrate with External Systems
– APIs: Utilize Salesforce APIs to integrate it with any other system, for instance, ERP, marketing platforms.
It will enable Salesforce to integrate all the marketing tools, including Marketo and Outreach.
Third-party tools could make use of tools for integrations, including MuleSoft, Jitterbit, or Informatica.
3.2. Data Syncing
Establish a schedule or real-time syncing to maintain data consistency between Salesforce and other systems.
It is very crucial to do the data syncing as, while generating a report, it should be with the right data since reports are very important for decision-making.
Step 4: Data Analysis and Reporting
4.1. Create Reports
– Standard Reports: Employ prebuilt reports to get insights faster.
Generally, Salesforce provides in-built features to generate general things like filtering and grouping, which help to generate reports very fast.
– Custom Reports: One can build custom reports with a focus on specific metrics and data pointers.
In the case of custom reports, we have to add columns as calculation to get to specific results, target percentage of 10% compared to this month’s revenue.
4.2. Creating Dashboards
– Visualise: Create dashboards to visualise KPIs and metrics
Examples will be Revenue by Region, Revenue by Account manager, Revenue by month/week
– Interactive Elements: Apply filters and drill-down capabilities to better explore the data.
Examples include Adding date filters, drill-down into options like
4.3. Scheduled Reporting
– Create automated report generation and distribution on a periodic basis for routine updates of information.
Step 5: Continuous Improvement
5.1. Monitoring of Data Quality
– Schedule regular reviews of data for accuracy and completeness.
– Utilize reports and dashboards in Salesforce to monitor metrics related to the quality of data.
5.2. User Training
Ongoing Education: The use of best practices regarding data input and management by the users should be taught.
Feedback Loop: This process must be active; it should be used to gather feedback from the users in order to find areas of improvement.
5.3. Process Optimization
Continuously monitor and enhance the processes in data management to make it more efficient and effective.
Conclusion:
Data management in Salesforce CRM involves understanding the data model, data inputting and maintenance, integration with other systems, analysis, and reporting on that data. By understanding these steps-and continually refining your processes-you will begin to unlock the full value of Salesforce-drive better decision making and build better relationships with your customers.