Gone are the days when data was only used to keep records of employees and internal elements of a business. As the business landscape has become more competitive throughout the years, data is now used differently.

Data quality is important because we need accurate and timely information to manage services and accountability for our businesses.If the gathered data doesn’t live up to the company's standards for accuracy, validity, completeness, and consistency, it can cause major setbacks for customer service, employee productivity, and essential strategies.

Your Salesforce CRM is undeniably a valuable asset to your company; however, what happens when the data inside this expensive investment isn’t cared for?

High-quality data decreases the risk of poor business decisions and enhances confidence in your data. But what does it cost you to not maintain your data and let it decay?

Research from Gartner found that organisations that fail to resolve their issues with poor data quality lose an estimated $15 million every year.

It’s important to note that data quality will depend on each business. What you consider to be high-quality data might be irrelevant to a business from another industry. This means that although data quality is relative to your industry, high-quality data still needs to be consistent.

As you start to assess the data your company is collecting, there are several factors that influence whether or not the information is valuable and actionable.

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How to Begin Improving Your Data

‍Accuracy

For any data to be useful, it needs to be accurate in the first place. Once the data gathered isn’t correct, it will never be put to use. The data collected reflects the real-world conditions it aims to describe. You’ll want to take into account what sources were used, as well as what processes were employed to verify the data collected. Acting on inaccurate data can cost the business money, effort, opportunity, and time.

Completeness

For data to be high-quality, it needs to be complete. The data needs to have important details that the business can capitalise on. For example, what good is a customer’s name if you don’t have an accurate email address? Your sales executives and marketing team need there to be no gaps in data. Complete data coverage gives companies truly actionable data that can be capitalised on, to generate revenue for the business.

Timeliness

Our world is ever-changing, which means your data is too. Out-of-date data is simply inaccurate. In an industry where decisions are made every day and changes happen instantly, timeliness is an important factor for any data when it can cost the company time, effort, and money. A worse scenario is that businesses can lose customers if they act on out-of-date data. Timely data can increase customer engagement and business reach whilst also stopping the loss of customers.

Relevance

The reason why you’re collecting data should be relevant to your business goals. Even if your data is in-depth, accurate, and up to date, if it doesn’t have any relation to your business plans and goals, it’s not useful. Successful companies don’t just decide on a whim what data they’re going to collect; they ensure it aligns with their business goals.

According to PwC’s Global Data and Analytics Survey, data-driven organisations are 3x more likely to report a significant improvement in decision-making when data is accurate and relevant.

Compliance

In response to a data-driven world, people have started to become concerned about exactly what information is being collected about them and who is using it. As a result, companies need to place a heavy emphasis on GDPR compliance when it comes to assessing their data quality. Non-compliant data is considered poor quality because it can end up costing companies monetarily down the road, not to mention the potential for damage to a company's reputation.

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‍How to Start Improving Data Quality in Salesforce

The process of improving data can be tricky to navigate. Ensuring the information is accurate, relevant, compliant, and comprehensive can be time-consuming and costly if done incorrectly. There are many third-party tools that can help assist you but obviously, I am going to focus on us, PipeLaunch. 🚀

• PipeLaunch is completely native to Salesforce.We can help take the stress out of you finding or creating accurate data in Salesforce by using 20+ data points and having full LinkedIn integration.
  

• Thanks to PipeLaunch you never need to leave Salesforce to research and create your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile).With PipeLaunch LinkedIn Integration, you can find your ICP and get additional matching profiles from LinkedIn that are relevant to your business target markets.
  

• PipeLaunch keeps Salesforce up to date by automatically comparing data from LinkedIn, notifying you when contacts change roles or move companies in real-time.
  

• Using our 20+ data points PipeLaunch gets company intel from official sources such as industry, revenue, employee count, and accurate email addresses.
  

• We give you the bonus of also knowing the technology stack of the business along with any custom company news that could be of benefit to your organisation when building an accurate and relevant data profile.

In a nutshell - PipeLaunch gives accurate, consistent, and real-time data that is relevant and reliable in Salesforce so your business can be successful when engaging with your Ideal Customer Profile.

You can trial PipeLaunch for 7 days with no obligation from the AppExchange.

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