iAll this dirty data can have detrimental effects on law firms. Organizations are losing clients and sales because of duplicate or incomplete contact data. This information is from the State of CRM Data Management report. Having wrong or old information can hurt a company’s relationships with customers and affect their earnings.
Regularly updating and cleaning their contact databases is crucial for businesses to ensure accurate and reliable information. This is causing significant delays in marketing campaigns, business development plans, and moving customers through the sales process.
Law firms can turn their data into a valuable asset by focusing on data quality and following these steps. This will help them grow and succeed. Here’s how your firm can improve its data quality:
Assess and Plan
A Data Quality Assessment can show you how much inaccurate data you have.
- How much bad data are we dealing with, and where is it located?
- How much is bad data costing us in wasted time and lost revenue?
- Where did our current data management processes go wrong, and how did we get to this point?
Financial data will affect the firm more quickly than updating contact details for inactive clients.
Decide whether to clean data manually or automatically based on your budget and goals. Automated data cleaning can clean large data sets in a short period, but it is not perfect.
Cleaning data manually can lead to the most accurate results, but it may be costly and time-consuming.
We recommend using automated tools to clean and add data initially. After that, data stewards can manually clean and add any remaining errors.
Data Standardization
To improve your cleaning efforts and prevent future data issues, you should create a Data Quality Standards Manual. This manual outlines the standards for data quality that you need to follow. Writing these standards will help ensure consistency and accuracy in your data cleaning processes.
Having a clear and accessible reference for all team members involved in data management is important. This guide outlines your organization’s specific data styles and processes for consistent data entry, preferred formatting, and monitoring. Amongst many other things, the manual should cover the following:
- Phone number guidelines
- Honorary and professional job titles
- Websites and email addresses
- Address standardization
Distribute the Data Quality Standards Manual to all staff and departments. This will ensure that everyone collects and enters client information consistently. Current employees and new hires should use it to learn how to input data accurately and consistently.
Data Quality Monitoring
Data quality is an ongoing process that needs constant monitoring and improvement, not just a one-time task. Firms have to dedicate the necessary resources required for ongoing maintenance and support.
Put processes in place to make ongoing data reviews routine. Configure dashboards to track data quality metrics like bounce rates or the number of duplicate records.
Some companies have hired Data Quality Professionals to update contact information and keep records current. Other firms choose to outsource this role to trusted Data Stewards, which can be a cost-effective solution for firms with a limited budget.
By embracing these strategies, law firms can unlock the true potential of their client data. Assessing data quality can help your company create a focused strategy for cleaning data. This strategy will prioritize valuable datasets and use affordable data cleaning services. Establishing a Data Quality Standards Manual ensures consistent data entry across departments, minimizing future errors.
Data quality is crucial and requires ongoing attention, resources, and a culture of accountability for data across the organization. You cannot fix it once and forget about it. Use these solutions to overcome data quality challenges and make the most of your organization’s data assets.
