“Ron Cowan, Zimmer Dental: Data integrity is the ‘elephant in the room’ of all CRM systems. A lack of a global process to reduce duplicate records is a primary reason why many CRM systems fail. If users cannot trust the data, they will stop using the system. ”
Although a CRM solution like salesforce.com is ideal for storing data, the key to successfully achieve the sales targets is not just a question about storing individual records, but to know how these records are linked, and how to use these relationships to up-sell, cross-sell and promote new products.
Managing customers and prospects are not something which can be put into a standard process. Each Industry, each business has its own way of managing the commercial relationships.
Many CRM solutions like salesforce.com is built on a template supporting a basic business company/contact data model, certain industries like Medical Devices, has a more complex model with Doctors, Physicians, Clinics, Hospitals etc., and the sales processes is not just a question of taking orders, but it may a be more educative approach where the client needs to be trained, having trials before the order actually can be signed etc.
Supporting a territorial account management model
First of all your data should support your account management model, and so a minimum level of data quality is required to assign new accounts/prospects to the appropriate sales person or team.
Imagine that you break your sales territories down by state, and your database contains a number of variations on the state name: “CA”, “California”, “Calif.” Etc. these variations makes it difficult to maintain the assignment algorithms, and thus the ownership of each account. Furthermore if you have Major Accounts which go across the geographic model, you will need a way to identify if a new Account is part of a group managed by your Major Account team, or if it a new prospect for one of your territorial account teams.
So while you focus on the operational activities towards the clients and prospects, we can help you manage your data better and make it more valuable and useful for your sales org.
Data normalization and standardization including values like state, and (for international oriented companies) country is a basic step to improve your data, but what is more important is the ability to see how the data is associated with each other.
Deduplication and consolidation of client data
Deduplication of your account and contact data is important in order to remove duplicates and redundant information but also to link all the different information elements which you collect in your database together – to get a 360 view on each account and contact i.e. consolidate data from product enquiries, training registrations, trial programs under one (1) single contact.
Taken into consideration that one doctor/physician may both work at a clinic, but also be associated with a number of local hospitals, makes the relational overview complex, but also more interesting as a happy client who works at different sites can be a good reference to get more business from other clients who works at the same sites.
“Ron Cowan, Zimmer Dental: Our ongoing use of DataTrim to eliminate duplicate records globally is a central reason for the success of Salesforce.com within our organization.”
The deduplication technology can also be used at organization level (company, clinic, hospital etc.) to identify organizations and their relationship. Many clinics and hospitals are part of groups where the final decision maker may be at the Group Level, but the influencers and the end users may be working at different sites. When the organization records in your database is organized into hierarchies, your team will more easily be able to spot the up-sell/cross-sell opportunities, as well as being able to identify the decision makers when these may be higher up in the hierarchy.
Summary
DataTrim has years of experience in processing global CRM data, and is providing a suite of solutions for salesforce.com clients which facilitates global data standardization and normalization, deduplication and account hierarchy management, all under the concept of a Data Laundry.
“With a number of good references, these solutions have proven to work well with companies in the Medical Devices industry.”
DataTrim Dupe Alerts
A generic deduplication solution to deduplicate existing data, as well as data being imported, added by users or entered through web-site registration forms.
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DataTrim Entry Check
A solution dedicated to prevent users from creating duplicates in salesforce and an effective way of performing advanced search for accounts, clinics, hospitals, contacts, doctors, physicians etc.
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Account Organizer
A must have solution for those who sells into organizations with group hierarchies, to easily view the structure of an organization, linking records together, change of ownership etc.
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DataTrim Data Laundry
An automated data standardization and normalization service, which improves your data quality and helps you identifying good and bad records (mail-able, phone-able, email-able).