Have you ever had that sinking feeling when you think about pulling together all your business data and realise the tens of different places that it might be in?
Identify Your Data Sources
First things first, you need to work out where all your data is and get that written down. You want to create a master checklist that you can use to make sure that all the data that you know about is correctly populated in your new CRM. When you find a new source, add it to your list. When you think you’ve got a full list, think some more. You’re bound to have forgotten some. Ask your colleagues, ask your managers – there will be client data everywhere.
Your aim at this stage is to simply identify where all the different pieces of client data can be found. Don’t worry about what you’ll do with it, just worry about identifying where it is. Here’s a starter list to get you going…
- Microsoft Outlook / Google Mail – inbox and sent-items
- Sales Reps address books
- Website registration capture forms
- Mobile phones
- Production job-book
- Accounting System
- Existing internal databases
- Purchased prospecting lists
Clean and DeDupe Your Data
Over the years, you’ll have accumulated a lot of data, some of it will be up-to-date, a lot of it might not be. It’s really important not to take your dirty data (that’s not been checked to make sure it’s up-to-date) and put that in your shiny new CRM. That would be like deciding to buy yourself a beautiful new car and when you pick it up from the garage, inviting the local tramp to load his (or her) rotting wares into the back and sit next to you whilst you try to enjoy your first ride. You’re not going to want to ride for too long.
Same with your CRM. If you load it up with dirty data, it’s going to be difficult to enjoy the benefits of the clean data. Get rid of any information you don’t need – it’s probably not relevant that 7 years ago you had a website enquiry from a student – and start with a clean set of data.
Finally, there are many companies that provide data cleansing and deduplication services. Just use your favourite search engine to find one. But make sure that you do! You’re looking for your cleansing service to provide you with one or more text-based CSV files containing your client data.
Segment Your Data
Whilst setting up your CRM, your implementation specialist will have created many different ways of displaying your data based on filtering criteria. This filtering criteria will use the specific data that you have to base actions, activities and reports on. So, it’s important to make sure that all the records that you’re uploading to your CRM contain the data that is used by the filters.
For example, if you have a CRM action which is to send an email to a client 14 days after their last order, you need a field in your CRM which records the date of their last order. If you don’t have this data available, the CRM won’t know to send the email.
If you don’t have all the data you need for segmentation, you should insert your best estimate of the data. In the example above, you might treat all customers where you haven’t got the the last order date of having a last order date of 14 days ago.
Segmentation will require input from team members who are ultimately responsible for the data. So, you should expect to set aside some of their time for this.
Data Upload / Population
Different CRM systems have different ways of uploading or populating data. Most will have some kind of data loader tool or import wizard. Depending on the Edition you’re using, Salesforce permits different information to be uploaded. So, whilst you can upload Leads, Accounts and Contacts in Professional Edition, you can’t upload Products and Opportunities. In these cases, you’ll need to arrange for someone to re-key the clean, segmented data into the CRM.
When you’re running a data upload, it’s really, really, really important that you test the upload first. I’ve had more than my fair share of horror stories, where clients have uploaded thousands of records only to find that some of the information was uploaded to the wrong place. And, unfortunately, they’ve only noticed after a few days when some of the information has been changed.
Upload first with less than 10 records. Check, double-check and then triple-check that all the data you’re expecting to see is there and in the right place. Build a short report so that it shows you exactly to where all the data has been imported. Then, and only then, upload the rest of the records. If you’ve spent a lot of time on cleaning and segmenting your data, you don’t want that effort to be wasted by an overzealous upload to the wrong place!
Involve the Right People
Members of your administrative team, or some temporary staff, can perform a lot of the activities above. Wherever possible, avoid getting a senior member of your team to undertake hours of data-cleansing unless he or she is the only person capable of doing so. You can find someone to key it in for you if you have clean data that needs to be re-keyed. There are plenty of online portals for that. Again, use your favourite search engine to find people who will work remotely per hour for you.
Finally, what tips do you have for uploading data to a CRM? What went well? And what went wrong? Be great to hear from you!
