Best practices for Salesforce data cleansing
When it comes to Salesforce data cleansing, the best practices to follow often start before it’s even time for a cleanse – either to make each cleanse as painless as possible, or to avoid the need for data cleansing at all.
1. Invest in data cleansing early
When orgs and associations are looking at implementing Salesforce, data cleansing often isn’t a high priority. But you will have to invest in it at some point if you want to meet your wider goals, so it’s always better to put data quality measures in place as soon as possible.
If you continue ignoring it for too long, those inaccuracies and bad habits will only continue to build up, and create a much larger issue when it comes time to cleanse. However, if you can identify your data challenges early, you can put the right measures in place to ensure success long term.
2. Get in the habit of routine cleaning
In many ways, the best practice for data cleansing is to avoid doing one big cleanse. Think of cleaning out your org’s database like cleaning out your home – if you leave it all to one big spring clean, you’re going to have a much larger project on your hands than if you commit to regularly tidying and taking stock throughout the year.
You will always need to update, enrich and clean your Salesforce data as your org grows and as time goes on, but if your team gets into the habit of regular, routine cleaning, you can avoid having to carry out the kind of large-scale intervention that data cleansing is often seen as.
That could mean marking out time each month to review older data points – for example, checking that every entry made five years ago still has the correct email domain and company information, and isn’t duplicated elsewhere in the system. It doesn’t have to be a full data cleanse each time, but routine database maintenance like this means there will be far fewer issues to find when it’s time to do a larger cleanse.
3. Enforcing data hygiene standards
As we’ve already said, human behavior plays a significant role in data quality and the need for data cleansing. If you want to make your Salesforce data cleansing as straightforward as possible, you need to be sure that any standards around data entry and data hygiene are upheld by everyone.
If you aren’t building a practice in-house to enforce those data entry standards, or if you’re not routinely looking at the quality of your data, then data cleansing is inevitable. You could even do a complete data cleanse before implementing new standards but then find yourself needing another cleanse a month later because people aren’t adhering to the new procedures.
For more insights on how to make the most of your data, see our thoughts on using Salesforce for your organization’s content personalization.