What price CRM data quality?
- 21 July, 2009 04:13
- Comments
In an accounting or ERP system, most of the data must be right, period. If invoices, accounts receivable, inventories, work-in-process numbers, ECAD files are "best guesses," someone will lose their job and the CIO will be on the hot seat.
In this column, I've had many quotable quotes about the need for data quality in SFA and CRM systems. And here's another one: perfectionism doesn't pay. It's so important, it's trademarked.
CRM Data is Different
In a CRM system, there's a range of allowable (and even expected) data quality that depends on the specific data element. Some things do have to be perfect, such as unique keys, internal security information, order quotes, order history, and anything that's subject to an audit (such as PCI, HIPAA, FERPA, or other compliance standards). But other things can be just an approximation or can be missing altogether. Is it essential that the customer's customer service calling history from last year be perfectly represented in your CRM system? Not likely. So how do you decide where to make your data quality investment?
How to Do Data Triage
The first step is to have an analyst pull out the CRM data dictionary (or, more likely, create one) and separate the data elements into three categories:
(1) the ones that must be there and must be correct to prevent corruption in external systems or misrepresentation of the business,
(2) the ones that should be correct for the CRM system to work at all, and
(3) the ones that people have asked for to make marketing, sales, and customer support work better.
The fun part comes in the next step. Do a quick data quality analysis on each data element in the three categories. Score the data quality by answering questions such as:
o Does this data element have an undisputed owner? Is it updated by a team member as a natural step in a key business process? Or can nearly anyone update it at any time?
o Does this data element have internal validation to prevent noisy input? Does it have an audit trail to support troubleshooting?
o What percentage of the CRM records has this data element missing, clearly incorrect, or duplicate?
Based on the resulting score, the analyst may want to reassign the triage category for some of the data elements.
Related Articles
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.
- Bookmark this page
- Share this article
- Got more on this story? Email CIO
- Follow CIO on twitter
-
Spiceworks' free management software gets integrated MDM
-
Opinion: Why national e-health is not for everyone
-
Opinion: Why national e-health is not for everyone
-
Opinion: Why national e-health is not for everyone
-
Opinion: Why national e-health is not for everyone
-
Deploying Flash in the Enterprise
Flash is quickly emerging as the preferred way to overcome the nagging performance limitations of hard disk drives. However, because flash comes at a significant price premium, outright replacement of HDDs with flash only makes sense in situations in which capacity requirements are relatively small and performance requirements are high. Learn how deployment approaches-including hybrid storage arrays, server flash, and all-flash arrays-that combine the performance of flash with the capacity of HDDs can be cost effective for a broad range of performance requirements. -
Customer Success - Slater & Gordon Lawyers
Lawyers work hard, and they work fast. Any activity that takes their focus away from the task at hand represents lost productivity and lost revenue. Slater & Gordon Lawyers needed to filter spam and email-borne malware and provide high availability for email. Results from the business solution they chose include 250 hours of IT staff time reclaimed annually for other tasks, long delays in email delivery alleviated, reduced email-related storage costs, and email failover to the cloud in minutes, avoiding hours-long outages. Find out how they got these results. -
Android Malware Exposed
Take an in-depth look at the evolution of android malware. The world of malware targeting the Android OS is similar yet very different from malware affecting Windows. Explore the rapidly evolving world of android malware and shed light on the various techniques used to exploit devices using this OS.
Get exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis. 
