In just three months, Salesforce will stop renewing Data.com licenses. If that surprises you, you’re already behind. But don’t panic, finding alternatives to Data.com and building your migration plan is what this blog series is all about.

The first post encouraged you to look at your existing data against your needs to determine gaps. The second post explained how to clean the data you have before you switch to a Data.com alternative. Now, we’ll look at how to keep your data clean. And replacing Data.com is a big part of that.

Step 3: Keep Your Data Clean

Data constantly degrades. From the moment you capture it, it starts to deteriorate, as it becomes less and less current. Even if you’ve done a major cleaning to prepare for moving to a Data.com alternative, you’ll need an ongoing management program to keep it clean – part best practices and part technology. The technology part is why you need to migrate to a Data.com replacement before your license expires.  

Let’s break it down.

Users: Be the change

Much of the business data we use these days is automatically collected or generated, so it should be accurate at the time of collection.  But a lot of data is still entered by hand and comes with human errors or from different systems that use inconsistent formatting.

Regardless of where the errors come from, your users can be your first line of defense in the battle for clean data. As they work in Salesforce each day, encourage them to flag or fix errors when they’re found.

We’re not saying that expensive sales reps and marketing staff should be combing through records to fix punctuation and correct mistakes. But if they’re editing a record anyway, a few seconds to correct an obvious error will have significant benefits downstream. Common obvious errors include non-standardized company names and geographic abbreviations, using an ampersand versus spelling out “and”, and even system-generated character codes.

Don’t be duped by duplicates

There are also duplicate records that are easily spotted during a search. If you enable your sales reps and marketing team to merge records in Salesforce, they can help reduce duplicates as part of their daily workflow, in just seconds.  

You can also take advantage of features built into Salesforce to systematically detect and manage duplicates.  

Duplicates might also be a sign of a bigger issue, either technical, process, or other. Giving users a means for flagging or escalating issues they find could help you solve problems for everyone.

Remember, user education is a key component of ongoing data cleanliness. Developing some best practices and expectations will help now and as you search for a Data.com replacement.

Check leads at the source

Online form fills are notoriously dirty. Prospects often enter bogus data on purpose. Haven’t we all received leads from Mickey Mouse living at 123 None of Your Business?

They also make typos or simply don’t know things, like how many employees their company has. All these errors, if not corrected, put a drain on sales and marketing productivity.

Thankfully, some Data.com competitors offer solutions that correct and enrich incoming leads with third-party data to ensure completeness and accuracy. Remember the 1-10-100 rule? As leads come in, this is your chance to clean them up at the low-end, $1 price point.

Keep the rest current

While your users can make corrections on a small scale and you can automatically correct leads as they enter Salesforce – with the right Data.com replacement – you still need a solution to maintain the accuracy and currency of the remainder of your data.  That’s the most important reason to find an alternative to Data.com. Remember, if you do nothing to keep it clean, data decays simply because of the passage of time.

Your primary goal as you evaluate Data.com competitors should be to find a solution that integrates directly into Salesforce to automatically update your data on a regular schedule. This is the surest way to keep your CRM data clean.

Get comprehensive data on every target

Once you’re confident in the accuracy of your data, you’ll hunger for more data and intelligence to be even more effective. In part 4 of this series, we’ll look at how to fill your data gaps. If you can’t wait, download the full Data.com Migration Planning Guide today. Or, if you’d like to talk with a data and sales intelligence expert, let us know and we’ll be glad to help.

READ PART 4