Once you have appointed your Data Steward it’s important to have them set your data standards. Data standards in CRM are so important in keeping your database clean and useful. If you don’t create consistent rules for importing data into CRM your look ups and searching won’t be reliable for the users.
What are data standards?
Data standards should be set for each major field in CRM. Types, sub types, status, address formats, phone number formats etc. Standards are the rules to follow for any users that will enter data into the CRM. Other standards can be which fields require an entry or which fields you can type anything into vs a pick list.
Some examples:
Will you users type in OH, Ohio or select OH from a pick list? Should the phone number format be 937-550-1204 or 9375501204 and where should an ext. be noted? What are the major fields in CRM? Well, that is up to you as a company to decide based on your goals of what you want out of CRM data.
Why are data Standards important?
Your marketing department wants to do a targeted mailing to prospects in Ohio. They pull a group based on State = OH. but there’s 300+ Accounts with the state = Ohio. You see the problem there right? Or the sales department needs a list of current Accounts, but the status field in CRM wasn’t made a required entry so now the group is incomplete. When you allow users to input however they see fit the data in CRM becomes ineffective.
Whether you are starting fresh or you have a mess of data in your CRM it’s never too late to set standards. Your data steward should sit down with department leadership and review what their needs are for reporting, group making, campaigns etc. Then work together to map out your company’s standards and document them. You should also take this time to agree on what you want from CRM. Talk about what processes will run through CRM, do you have an ERP you want connected also? Discuss campaigns, dashboards and reporting expectations too. This will keep all departments working together and effectively using the CRM data.
You have your standards set, now what?
You must clearly communicate the standards and categories to all users. Users that don’t do data entry need to understand your categories and decisions so they know how to do lookups and use the data. Users that enter the data need to understand your standards for obvious reasons, they enter data into CRM. Once you’ve clearly communicated and documented all your standards now it’s time to clean up your CRM database.
There’s several tools in Infor CRM available to help make quick and easy work of this. With Infor CRM web client; use bulk updates for fields that have a 1 to 1 value change.
When you have more complex changes; i.e. finding all instances of Ohio and changing them all to OH; use Infor CRM LAN client. This platform allows you to create a group that captures all the incorrect versions of the data, and then use the Replace all data in the State field with OH.
