By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist
Data quality is important to CRM even without AI because quality data helps reps increase efficiency, build trust with customers, and use Salesforce effectively.
When you add AI to the mix, data quality becomes even more important. The predictive models behind Sales Cloud Einstein are based on your Salesforce data, so having complete, accurate data helps Einstein give you the best predictions, recommendations, and insights.
But data quality is only part of the AI equation. Data quantity matters too. Sales Cloud Einstein uses machine learning to identify patterns in massive amounts of data. Those patterns produce reliable intelligence. In order for Sales Cloud Einstein to identify patterns, it needs a sufficient amount of historical data.
The Einstein Readiness Assessor is a tool that tells you whether you meet the requirements for specific Sales Cloud Einstein features. The assessor analyzes your Salesforce implementation, in either a production or sandbox environment, and sends you a personalized report detailing which Einstein features you’re ready to use now, and which ones require more preparation.
When your Salesforce administrator analyzes your data some things to look for include missing records, duplicate records, no data standardization, incomplete records, and stale data.
Chances are good you are already overwhelmed at how difficult it can be to determine the quality of your data let alone fix the issues. Worry not! The Salesforce AppExchange has a plethora of packages and tools to assess the quality of your data. With just a few clicks you have access to a host of reports and dashboards.
Once you know how healthy your data is you are perfectly poised to develop and implement a data management plan.
A typical data management plan includes standards for creating, processing, and maintaining data.
Set naming conventions for records and never abbreviate things like company names.
Determine a standard formatting for dates and money.
Whenever you can standardize field data with picklists you greatly improve the quality of your data. Nobody wants to search for records in the United States and have to filter against US, USA, US of A, United States of America and all the common misspellings of the same.
Workflows and automations around processes for record creation, reviewing, updating, and archiving help to maintain data integrity.
Set company wide standards for data quality putting value on age, completeness, usage, accuracy, consistency and duplicates.
Determine who owns records, who is responsible for changes to data, and who should be notified when data changes.
Determine and set up appropriate levels of privacy for data with an eye to regulatory, legal, and contractual requirements as well as roles and permission sets required for users.
Monitoring with an outline process for quality control of data will go a long way towards getting your Salesforce data Sales Cloud Einstein ready and keeping it that way. Determine the frequency, scope, owners, and checks included for updating data, preventing duplicates, merging records, adding records, and archiving records.
The power of Salesforce lies in its flexibility. You can easily customize Salesforce to support your company’s data management plan.
Ensure all required fields for your business are required in Salesforce. Requiring data for leads can set you up for success to properly score, assign, and convert them.
Validation rules and data governance can be set up to require phone numbers, customer IDs and other numeric fields be entered correctly.
Workflow rules allow you to automate standard internal procedures and processes which not only saves time but also prevents human error.
Page layouts should be modified to show only the data relevant to the users - hidden field data still exists for the record but it doesn’t get in the way and it can not be accidentally edited or deleted.
Data enrichment tools available through Data Apps on the AppExhange can help you readily and accurately append data to your Salesforce records.
Duplicate management helps keep your data accurate and healthy. Salesforce’s built-in duplicate management tools help you prevent new duplicates from being created moving forward.
Data integrity impacts every measurable success metric for your business whether you use Salesforce as a stand alone tool or coupled with add ons like Sales Cloud Einstein. What is data integrity? Data integrity is a process or a set of practices that ensures the security, accuracy, and overall quality of data. It is a broad concept that includes cybersecurity, physical safety, and database management.
If getting your Salesforce data Sales Cloud Einstein ready is overwhelming, Summit Technologies LLC can help. If you are just starting to implement Salesforce in your organization, check out Summit Technologies’ Salesforce Quickstarts.