Bad Salesforce Data Quality? You’re Not Alone.

It seems like almost everyone uses Salesforce, but how exactly are businesses optimizing it for themselves? Our friends over at Ebsta conducted a survey of 590 Salesforce users from all industries to identify Salesforce usage, challenges, and the role of the Salesforce admin. Their key findings may surprise you:

• 70% of users said that their biggest Salesforce challenge was data quality/missing information
• 52% of Salesforce Admins said that the most important aspect of their role is to improve productivity and operations within their business
• 70% of users said that they always find contact information missing or out of date such as email address or contact number in Salesforce records

Big Challenges With Bigger Consequences
Users were given a list and asked to check what challenges they had with Salesforce. Here were the results:

After data quality, workflows & customizations” and “system integrations” were identified as the next most common challenges. Third on the list was “generating useful reports & dashboards,” which goes hand-in-hand with the data issues. This is because bad data leads to inaccurate and ineffective reports.

Life or Death Data Quality
Seven out of ten respondents said they often find contact information, such as email addresses and contact numbers were missing entirely. This data is crucial. What good are leads that you can’t get in touch with?

Most of the respondents (78%) also reported that they updated Salesforce records every day which points to a short data life. Since people often move away from a company or position to another and there is no way for manual updates to keep up with the rate of change.

When Salesforce doesn’t have up-to-date information, the Sales, Customer Service and Marketing departments are using inaccurate information to communicate. This leads to bad customer service, ineffective marketing and inaccurate reports. Bottom line: bad data equals bad business.

The Admin’s Struggle
This is truly the year of the Salesforce Admin. Thirty-eight percent of the survey’s respondents indicated that they were a Salesforce admin. Thirty-eight percent of respondents also indicated their company had a Certified Salesforce Administrator on staff. There was even an admin keynote at Dreamforce this year. In an effort to nail down this complex role and Ebsta asked admins what they considered to be the most important aspect of their role.

Bad Data: A Global Problem
According to the survey bad data is a global problem that needs to be solved. The detrimental effects of inaccurate data run deep and wide and this problem affects all departments leading to time wasted, poor resource management and low quality prospecting. We are seeing that hiring to fulfill the role of a dedicated Salesforce Admin is becoming a strategy but is that the answer? With more and more businesses in all industries moving their customer and lead data to the cloud, the problem of poor data quality is sure to spread. However, with awareness comes action, and with actions come solutions. Only time will tell if the Salesforce Admin is the silver bullet.

For the full findings, head over to the 2015 Salesforce Usage Report.

Need help wrangling your Salesforce data quality? Give Endiem a call.