20 Aug The Problem with Salesforce Might Be Your Data
A new survey published last month found that 54% of Salesforce user respondents reported that application and data source integration is their most pressing challenge. In addition, 63% stated integration difficulties resulted in slower Salesforce performance. Although people find challenges when working with Salesforce, in most cases, the pros outweigh the cons. There are ways to combat the issue with data storage and usage when implementing Salesforce.
One thing most people using Salesforce can agree on is that storing data is expensive. The costs add up quickly with thousands of records and data fields for each record. An analogy we like on this topic describes your data like a house. Consider this, it’s much cheaper and easier to clean out your closets every spring than it is to build new rooms on to your home to store more things. The same is true of your Salesforce data. Simply cleaning out data that doesn’t hold any relevance or insight saves money and enables you to run more intelligent reports.
The Value of Data
Your data is precious to you, we get that. It holds the keys to all of your sales progress and potential. The more you and your organization know about someone, the better off you are for making a sale, right?
The answer is, not always. What might seem like vital information could mean hitting your Salesforce data cap before you really should, and spending more for data that isn’t really relevant for your sales goals. What seems like an insurmountable task, combing through piles of data to find the information that is actually important, will actually save you a lot of money and make the process of following up with leads and reporting on sales goals much easier.
We help a lot of people implement Salesforce Sales cloud into their organization, and being the most popular Salesforce tool, a lot of people are up against data limits. The amount of data Salesforce offers might be surprising but in reality, you probably don’t need as much data storage as you think you do. In this blog, we’ll walk you through easy ways you can manage your data and make reporting more valuable when Salesforce is up and running in full effect.
Here are a few things you can do to minimize bad data and get more from your money.
Think Wisely About Tasks and Notes
Tasks and notes are saved within Salesforce as data points. It’s not completely necessary to hold all of this information in one place. There are other tools you can use to track daily tasks or information sharing. Yes, it is convenient in the short-term, but all of these data points add up and make navigating through your data set more difficult. Also, ask your team how efficiently they’re really using tasks. Is it a nice reminder, or are they dependent on using tasks to manage workflows? If it’s the former, there are other less costly processes for documenting this line of communication.
Use Process Builder to Store Emails
Salesforce looks at emails as touchpoints with your lead. It’s nice to have all of this in one place, but is it really necessary? Consider using a tool like Chatter to offload the amount of data stored in your Salesforce account. You can still easily track this information without taking up precious, and expensive, space.
Take the Time to Update Bad Data
Did you know every thirty minutes 120 business addresses change? This is just one of many data fields you would have for a business and/or a lead. Imagine with all of this changing data, how quickly your data becomes obsolete. Make updating pertinent information part of your strategy to make sure you aren’t hanging on to junk data and wasting space in your Salesforce account. If a lead is no longer a lead, there’s no reason to keep their old information in your database. This bad data can also throw a wrench in your reporting. Bad data can skew your reports and show you inaccurate representations of the health and success of your sales efforts.
Call in the Professionals
Managing data is probably not part of your job description, but it could save you a lot of time and your company money. Take some time and build in data health to your regular sales process, or bring someone in to help you manage and maintain to get the most out of Salesforce. We can help you make sense of your data and keep your systems running smoothly for the long haul. If you’re ready to cut down on the time it takes to run reports and free up some of that valuable data space, give us a call and we’ll build a plan for helping you do more with less.