According to a Gartner Group report, bad data is the main reason that CRM projects fail; poor CRM data quality compromises an organisation’s investment in CRM and undermines customer relationships.
In our opinion, CRM vendors like Dynamics 365, whilst having good intent, have abdicated responsibility for the data content; it’s integrity, quality and fitness for use. They do a great job of managing the database container; but provide few, if any, offer data quality improvement tools which ensure the data remains complete, current, duplicate free and consistent.
Whilst bureau are certainly expert in the context of deduplication and data cleansing, they are disconnected from the CRM system and are unlikely to be CRM application savvy.
Why is this important?
- Because CRM systems need to be duplicate free to provide a Single Customer View (SCV) and allow the business to better serve its customers
- Because if you don’t know what you’re doing critical 1:1 data like opt in flags and notes may be lost and externally linked database records may be orphaned
- Because there is a duty under GDPR to ensure that customer data is ‘accurate’, ‘kept up to date’ and ‘erased or rectified’ if inaccurate or misleading
So, using a bureau is fine up to the point data is imported into the CRM system (i.e., data preparation). However, once data is in the CRM application, exporting and re-importing data is fraught with problems.
Specialist software vendors who understand how to Master and Merge records in CRM systems will also endeavour to correct the root causes of data defects. Commonly, data capture, data import or data integration and migration.
Adding specialist CRM deduplication solutions, which help manage through automation: Master Record selection, Field filling rules, Record merging and Post-merging remediation rules.
The resulting Single Customer View create and maintain an almost immediate return on investment by saving unnecessary data steward scrap and re-work, mitigate brand damage and avoid the bad decisions made on untrustworthy customer data.
DQ Global® has vast experience in working with CRM customer data and has developed a range of CRM data quality tools to solve these data centric challenges, deliver single customer views and integrate with other systems to offer master data management capabilities.
