On CRM: Key Steps To Ensure A Clean, Reliable And Effective CRM Database

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and other software vendors love to tout their features, functionality, automation, AI tools and analytics. Good for them. But in the end, and regardless what system you buy and what tools you use, it’s just a database. And if the data is a mess, your system is worthless — both now and as a future sellable asset. So how to ensure that your CRM database has good, reliable, up-to-date, accurate and complete data? You need to do the following.

Hire an administrator.

For starters, you need to have an administrator in charge of your database. This doesn’t have to be a database expert or an IT guru. It needs to be a smart power user who’s tasked with ensuring that fields are completed, updated and current and that users are trained to enter the data correctly. That person is responsible for the completeness and accuracy of the data. They need to be expert in the system and have the support of outside consultants and the software vendor. If something is missing, incorrect or incomplete then it’s that person’s job to not only fix it, but implement the necessary controls to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

Keep it simple.

Next, keep your database simple. CRM vendors love to hype that you can create thousands of fields and countless screens and views. Don’t do that. Your sales and customer service people — the primary users of your system — don’t have the time to keep filling out all the information you’d love to have in a perfect world. It’s not a perfect world. Settle for the key fields necessary to manage the customer’s account. Limit your fields and screens. Make it easy to enter the data and then hold your users to this.

Setup up security controls.

(Read the full column in?Forbes)

Forbes