The Importance of CRM Data and Database Management
Where is CRM Data Stored?
A CRM database is the source of all client information collected, governed, transformed and shared across your organization. It also includes marketing and sales reporting tools.
A centralized CRM database allows your sales, marketing and customer service teams to instantly access the data they need. It eliminates departmental siloes and provides a holistic view of each customer’s identity, history and preferences.
Customer Data
A well-managed CRM system provides a central database for businesses to store customer data. This allows for better consumer analysis and helps businesses grow.
Without a system in place, sales and marketing departments usually have their own ways of recording data, which can lead to a disorganized customer database. Additionally, searching for a specific record could require sifting through multiple spreadsheets and databases, which can take up valuable time.
To overcome this challenge, companies should set robust company guidelines and train employees on how to use CRM systems. They should also select a CRM tool that prioritizes security, accessibility and scalability to manage the volume of information. This will help teams work more efficiently and ensure all information is readily available. Additionally, some CRMs offer sales and marketing alignment features to help the teams collaborate effectively.
Contact Data
A CRM database is a resource where client information is collected, governed and transformed to offer innumerable advantages to business users. It helps companies to boost customer engagement, automate marketing communications and sales deals, track product purchase patterns and provide personalized customer and lead communications.
CRM data must be structured properly to ensure consistent access, effective data analytics and seamless CRM integrations. It is essential to identify and implement processes for data setup, maintenance, cleansing, appending and enrichment.
Ensure that all your sales and service team members have access to the same information. Integrating CRM with a business phone system, contact center solution, multi-channel marketing automation platform and invoicing systems enables all departments to share customer data in real time, eliminating departmental silos. This increases productivity, reduces errors and improves collaboration across teams.
Lead Data
Data collected from leads can include their personal details such as name, email address and Skype address. This can be sourced through sign-up forms, email campaigns and website pop-ups. Leads also provide valuable insights through their purchase patterns, which gives clues as to whether they may be ripe for upsells or cross-sells.
Keeping your lead information organized and formatted appropriately will make it easier to access and process. Ensure that your standard operating procedures (SOPs) are clear about how your team should record and maintain this information, and that your CRM software is set up to keep track of the key details for you.
A well-structured database makes CRM an invaluable tool for marketing and sales professionals to optimize business operations and serve customers and leads effectively. Contact Aktify for best-practice advice on data management, data structure and integration that will improve your customer communications and sales conversions.
Account Data
Account data contains information about your business’s existing customers. This type of CRM data helps you better understand your clients’ likes and dislikes so you can shape future products or services that meet their needs. It also allows you to track customer feedback so that your team can address any issues quickly.
A CRM database that effectively collects, governs, transforms, and shares customer data enables marketers, sales professionals, and customer service staff to make more informed decisions, develop stronger marketing campaigns, increase their customer base, optimize returns from customer relationships, and improve overall customer satisfaction. Appropriate database setup, maintenance, cleansing, appending and enrichment processes are critical to maintaining data integrity.
A robust and reliable CRM system is essential to your organization’s success. To ensure that your CRM databases are operating efficiently, check out the storage space and usage details in your org’s data management dashboard.
Opportunity Data
One of the most common sales process leveraging Standard Salesforce Objects is Opportunities – they represent the actual sales deals. The object includes certain best practice functionality that, when combined with other generally available Salesforce features, supercharges enablement and efficiency.
Opportunity Stages are an important piece of functionality for accurately tracking progression. The feature is supported by the Salesforce Path Lightning Component, which allows users to visualize an opportunity’s progress through a picklist’s values with a chevron diagram – a powerful way to keep them on track and moving forward.
Sales should also be encouraged to add Contact Roles to all their Opportunities – this is another out of the box feature that, when combined with other Salesforce functionality, enables Account-Based Marketing and Pardot segmentation based on opportunities.
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