Strong Salesforce data management helps businesses see the greatest value from their most important resource—customer data.
Why It Matters: Your CRM is full of actionable insights that can be the difference between successfully helping customers and missing opportunities. Salesforce is likely your greatest container of data. Proper management helps you see the benefits of this resource.
- Reliable data management helps teams improve customer relationships, streamline operations, and drive decision-making.
- Without proper data management, the value of your data diminishes, leading to missed opportunities and increased risks.
- Regulatory compliance relies on reliable documentation and organization of Salesforce data.
We’ll explore these seven critical aspects of Salesforce data management:
1. Data Governance
Data governance refers to a combination of principles and practices with the goal of maintaining a quality pool of data within your Salesforce environment.
A proper data governance strategy will simplify planning, heighten accountability, and provide actionable insights for future improvements.
A thoughtful approach will provide the best results. Read our blog with 8 Salesforce Data Governance Best Practices to learn more.
2. Data Quality
Not only does low-quality data lack the benefits of high-quality data, but it’s actually detrimental to the functionality of your Salesforce environment and can create data security vulnerabilities.
Regularly perform data cleansing and validation processes to ensure data is accurate, complete, consistent, and timely.
Automated scanners are available to flag issues like duplicates, missing fields, and outdated information.
3. Data Security
Data security threats continue to grow each year. In 2024, the third quarter saw a 75% increase in cyberattacks around the world. Trends like these continue to be reported, which signals something you might intuitively know: data security needs to be a major focal point for Salesforce data management.
Employ DevSecOps tools that provide encryption, access controls, and regular security audits to protect data against breaches, leaks, and unauthorized access.
Continuous monitoring is critical for verifying stability and remaining vigilant against attacks.
4. Data Storage
You can’t analyze your data if you don’t have a place to put it—or if your team doesn’t know where to find it.
Maintain a consistent manner of storing, labeling, and assigning access for data storage repositories.
Utilize best practices like archiving unused data, periodically cleaning up outdated files, compressing large files to preserve space, and wisely using custom objects.
5. Data Accessibility
Salesforce data management helps team members access the data they need to perform their duties. At the same time, it restricts data specifically to those individuals to prevent data from becoming overexposed.
Maintain updated user roles and permissions while defining sharing rules to ensure data is only accessible by individuals who need it.
Restricting access drastically reduces the possibility of an accidental deletion or alteration of sensitive Salesforce data.
6. Data Integration
Salesforce might be your hub for data, but it likely isn’t the only source. Most organizations utilize third-party tools like marketing automation, which pulls data from various places to be analyzed and tracked within Salesforce.
Leverage APIs and Salesforce-specific tooling to maintain a holistic view of customer data and operations.
Moving data from location to location creates numerous potential failure points. Proper integrations ensure nothing gets lost in transit from the source to Salesforce.
7. Scalability
Ideally, your business is going to grow. And with that will come an ever-increasing repository of data. You need to be prepared to handle greater volumes of data while safeguarding its quality and security.
Utilizing cloud-based infrastructure and flexible data storage options helps organizations handle large amounts of data, support more users, and accommodate additional functionality.
Salesforce data management is a critical consideration that will set an organization up for a more predictable and profitable future. The steps you take today to manage your data will pay dividends as you expand your customer base.
Next Step…
Data quality is critical for maintaining a secure, dependable, and functional Salesforce strategy.
Download our ebook, The Definitive Handbook to Quality Management in Salesforce DevOps, to learn how to maintain reliable data sets in your Salesforce environment.