So what do you do if you just can’t seem to get data quality help from within your firm – or if you don’t want to spend months manually cleaning your CRM data? How big a problem is data quality depression really?
In the past, some firms neglected CRM data quality as a minor issue – to their detriment. In fact, poor data quality can become a serious problem, especially during an initial rollout because the attorneys can quickly lose confidence in the system if the data is a mess. After all, attorneys are trained to find fault – and when they do, they may jump to the conclusion that if the data is bad, the system is not trustworthy. Then adoption and usage will stall.
Additionally, until the data is properly cleaned and deduplicated, the value of your CRM cannot be fully recognized. Until the entire firm is rolled out, the attorneys can’t leverage relationship intelligence to identify ‘who knows who’ relationships. Until comprehensive contact information is collected and compiled and contacts are categorized (how’s that for alliteration?), it’s almost impossible to accurately distribute mailings, invitations or other communications.
As a result, the longer the data cleanup process takes, the more marketing and business development opportunities are lost – and the more time and money are wasted. So ultimately, if you don’t focus on data quality, you could end up with what many firms refer to their CRM system as: a glorified, overpriced rolodex.
