How to Ensure You Have the Right Data in Your CRM System (Video)

Not all data belongs in your CRM system; to serve your goals effectively, you need to have the right data, as Diolachan Consulting's Edward Garry explains in this clip from CRM evolution 2018.

Learn more about CRM evolution 2019.

Read the complete transcript of this clip:

Edward Garry: I was also on the business side for 18 years building CRM Systems, both B2C and B2B, and the requests that you get to have information put into the CRM system are unbelievable. They want everything in the kitchen sink, and that's what I'm saying is: you don't need to have absolutely every pile-of-garbage data that's in your whole company throw it into the kitchen sink and say, "Okay, that's gonna be successful because now we have everything in this one system."

CRM is not supposed to be everything and have every single piece of data. It's supposed to have the right data. I want to emphasize that word: right. And if you don't have the right data, you don't get the salespeople to buy into the system. If you have too much data, then they can't find the right data within the system to be able to make the conclusions and they find the system to be cumbersome. You've heard that word: clunky, hard to find, hard to use.

So, our goal is to try to find out what is the right information to be in your CRM system. Going on that same theme of not all internal data belongs in your CRM system, I can tell you that from my past two roles I've had all of these things come into me as requests. And if you're looking at your CRM strategy and then you're looking at all these requests, there are some things that logically belong in the system. And there are some things that sit alongside of your system. Maybe your system has an API that sends information from your application over to another side of the application, but I have these right now all in green because they're all things that people request from and I can't possibly build them and have a complete process and be able to deliver this in a timely fashion. Also, remember: Once it's in your system to the end user, you own it.

When they see the revenue for their customer and the revenue information is not correct, who are they gonna call? You think they're gonna call over to County to the Revenue Department? No, they think it's part of your solution and your CRM tool, so therefore they call you.

Keep in mind that everything that you build in there you have to maintain, or have the ability to have the relationships throughout the company to be able to retain it. I'm seeing a few heads nodding yes, so I think I'm on track with that one.

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