Data Hygiene: Definition, Benefits, and Best Practices

Most of us follow a similar routine in the kitchen: we prepare breakfast in the morning and wipe up any spills or loose crumbs as we go. We reposition containers if the cupboard is chaotic so that we can find the sugar and cereal with ease the next day. We take pasteurized milk out of the refrigerator because we know deep down that it shouldn’t be kept.

Taking care of household cleanliness has become second nature, but what about data hygiene? Good data hygiene in sales is as crucial as good kitchen cleanliness.

What is data hygiene?

Maintaining accurate, current, and well-organized sales data through a variety of methods is known as data hygiene. Anything that aids the sales team is considered sales data. This includes data regarding the pipeline for sales, the effectiveness of sales representatives, and potential and existing clients.

It is terrible data hygiene and can be detrimental to income to allow stored data to become disorganized or out of current. Errors can occur accidentally when entering data for the first time or when changing entries, and they are simple to overlook.

Sales and marketing teams are more productive when they practice effective data hygiene.

Why is data hygiene important?

McKinsey reports that 53% of the world’s top-performing companies use data to drive revenue. Businesses hoping to follow in their footsteps should ask themselves: What is the point in implementing big data if it’s the wrong data?

According to research, these are the top five functions sales data is used for:

• Selecting accounts to target
• Selecting industries to target
• Assessing performance
• Selecting regions to target
• Identifying the buying committee

Sales teams are unable to do these tasks to the best of their abilities due to poorly handled data.

Data hygiene best practices with lean IT

Happily, the first step towards practicing excellent data hygiene is realizing how important it is. We can cross that one item off the list.

It’s also advisable to practice the remaining parts:

• Audit the data

Find the info that is already there. Verify that the system for storing, recording, and analysing it is operating correctly. Ascertain which data metrics are important to the company and whether any dirty data—that is, data that is inaccurate or out-of-date—exists, then make the necessary adjustments.

• Remove unneeded data

It is possible to have too much info. Data that won’t be helpful for marketing or sales shouldn’t be gathered or retained. This data should not be utilized or stored and may include customer names or contact information on official do-not-contact lists, consumer information from underage sources, or non-compliant data.

• Be detail-oriented

Look closely at the details in every entry. Email formats and abbreviations must to be uniform throughout the database. Standardization increases readability and highlights mistakes.

• Make data hygiene a habit

Data hygiene is a continuous process; a single clean is insufficient. Accurate data entry and frequent database reviews are essential for reducing wasteful spending and maximizing return on investment.

• Enlist a data team

The professionals are the most knowledgeable. Both of the aforementioned jobs and more difficult ones, such as merging or eliminating duplicates, can be completed by a group of data specialists. The group may consist of employees or a data hygiene services provider that has been contracted.

• Use the right tools

According to 71% of sales representatives, entering data takes up too much of their time when they should be closing deals. Sales solutions that facilitate data administration, monitoring, and visibility reduce errors and save sellers time.

Lean IT: Data hygiene tools

Saying, “I should keep my kitchen clean,” is simple. But achieving that is a whole different story, and it may quickly become a burdensome task.

Data hygiene is no different. For this reason, there are instruments that handle part of these duties rather than placing them on the backs of sales representatives.

By integrating automatic data capture with CRM, email, and calendars, sales systems such as Revenue Grid facilitate data hygiene. The software syncs calendars automatically to log meetings into Salesforce and automatically builds Salesforce entries and updates them with new data as it is captured.

Revenue Grid addresses the issue of data visibility by providing sales leaders with a dashboard that displays team analytics, performance metrics, and individual sales activities, in addition to a dashboard that displays real-time pipeline information.

Data hygiene vs. data cleansing

The majority of salespeople have at some point heard the term “data cleanse,” but what distinguishes data cleansing from data hygiene?

In everyday language, picture yourself going about your business at home and performing as little duties as possible. Dishes are placed in the sink, but you don’t wash them. You never scrub the shower; you just spray it down. The house will be filthy in a month.

You need a major cleanup after not managing tasks or data for a while; on the other hand, maintaining excellent data hygiene is similar to tidying up as you go and avoiding problems.

Both entail identifying and eliminating inaccurate or out-of-date data. Still, you can’t depend solely on data purification. Regular data cleansing is just one aspect of sound data hygiene.

Data cleansing process

One excellent way to start implementing proper data hygiene is with a data clean. When a business has to cleanse its data, there are a few key actions they need to take:

1. Identify and remove duplicate data

2. Eliminate any useless or out-of-date data.

3. Remove unnecessary information to avoid errors and duplications.

4. Fill up any gaps in the data by entering values or, if necessary, merging

5. To maintain consistency in the data, standardize field formats and naming practices.

6. To guarantee quality, evaluate your data and the parameters used for data gathering.

Get clean and stay clean

Armed with a deep understanding of data hygiene, it’s time to explore the business data hygiene options and techniques with lean IT, a well-planned data hygiene strategy strengthens sellers’ customer knowledge and reduces wasteful spending, thereby improving return on investment.

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