Configero experts joined fellow Salesforce users, partners, and evangelists at the latest Atlanta Salesforce User Group meeting to hear the latest and greatest in the world of Salesforce and best practices around dealing with business challenges, solutions, and lessons learned. Data quality and migration were major topics, presented by John Boney, Program Administrator at AGC Glass Company, with the major takeaways highlighted below.
Getting Your Data into Salesforce
A focus on migrating data from various sources into Salesforce.com
What is the process?
- Understanding and exporting data from the source systems
- Consolidating data
- Cleaning and organizing the data (de-dupe, etc)
- Importing
- Check and validate data
Understanding Your Data
Pain Points
- Data in various systems
- Can involve multiple people/departments
- Process can be time-consuming
Key Questions
- What are the sources of data?
- Who is going to use the data?
- What data is relevant moving forward?
- Will any custom fields need to be added?
Solutions
- Plan and prepare
- Communicate to others what you are planning to do with the information
- Build templates for others to use
- Conduct as few exports as possible
- Understand the business needs and processes
Consolidating Data
Pain Points
- Multiple files
- Many different file formats/layouts
- Possible variations in field names
- Data formats could vary from file to file
Key Questions
- Has all the data been gathered?
- Are field formats consistent?
- Does each file contain all the required information/data points?
Solutions
- Have teams return files rather than individuals
- Enforce the use of templates
- Communicate the importance of the process
- Get management on board
- Remove any irrelevant fields
Cleaning and Organizing Data
Pain Points
- Not an easy process
- Can be time-consuming
- Maintaining consistency across record types
- Determining which information is correct
Key Questions
- Have all the duplicates been removed?
- Are naming conventions consistent?
- Is the data complete?
- What defines a winning record in the case of duplication?
- Has the owner for each record been identified?
Solutions
- Use a data management tool if available
- Develop and agree on rules that determine what stays and what goes
- Work with the people that are closest to the data
- Conduct data quality analysis
- Check for missing data and fill in where possible
Import
Pain Points
- Can seem overwhelming
- There are many different parts that need to end up matching correctly
- Making sure data is loaded in the correct order
Key Questions
- Have the import file fields been mapped to fields in Salesforce.com?
- Is the order of import defined?
- Are test batches ready to import?
- Is a process laid out for loading related items??
Solutions
- Take a step back and review all the information
- Map out a relational diagram and start from the top
- Use a data management tool available
- Import a small test batch to verify the process is working
- Make any adjustments to the import file before importing the complete file
Check and Validate
Pain Points
- The reality check
- Time-consuming
Key Questions
- Have data quality reports been built?
- Are all the relevant data points accounted for?
- How do the reports in Salesforce compare to the source data?
Solutions
- Build reports and test summaries
- Work with others that understand the data
- Make sure key stakeholders sign off
- Save back up copies of data
Lessons Learned
- Do research ahead of time
- Gain a deep understanding of the data and how everything is related
Resources
- Salesforce learning center
- 5 steps to getting your data into salesforce crm