Common CRM Data Problems
Whilst Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are effective for helping businesses to better connect with customers as well as improving the way businesses are run, users can, unfortunately, encounter issues which mean that they fail to use CRM to its full potential which can prove to be a big waste of time and money.
When left to its own devices, a CRM system quickly develops flaws. The foundation of data you use to build information about your customers begins to develop hairline cracks.
As the cracks grow, the foundations start to give way.
While problems with data sound relatively minor, they can make CRM massively inefficient and partially ineffective. The problem is, you won’t know where the problems lie until you tackle the issue head-on.
- Duplicated records; customers who are recorded under several names or addresses, for example
- Inaccuracies; data that may once have been true but is no longer true or has never been true at all
- Incomplete records; data that has been corrupted, mistyped, abandoned or orphaned
- Invalid information; records that your CRM simply cannot work with, and records that crash the software or cause problems elsewhere
Business Solutions
In order to fix your data, you must make data quality a corporate imperative. Those at the top of the organization must understand the phenomenal waste that poor quality data creates. And they must see how inevitable it is that data in a CRM goes bad.
Even more importantly, they must see this in financial terms.
Once the business and the data are aligned, the business can move towards a culture where everyone gets it the right the first time. Indeed, it’s in everyone’s best interests to do so. An investment in data quality software is an essential part of any strategy.
The best motivator for data quality improvement is always cost savings. Businesses tend to adopt things that improve profits, and a data quality regime certainly will.
In addition, high CRM data quality helps to:
- Improve staff morale
- Improve customer relationships
- Give the business a competitive advantage thanks to its leaner, more agile outlook
- Facilitate good quality decision making, fuelled by accurate reporting
- Allow staff to trust the data they are using
- Prevent the development of costly workarounds
- Make training more efficient
Business Solutions offers CRM solutions. We also offer ERP systems and much other software on the cloud to help manufacturers improve productivity, efficiency, and profitability. Please contact us for a consultation today. We will help you check the best business intelligence solution for your needs.
