Mastering Salesforce Data Management: A Guide to Streamline Your Business

Salesforce storage optimization is essential for enhancing performance and controlling costs by archiving and backing up accessed data to external storage.

Salesforce data management is essential for businesses that utilize Salesforce as their CRM tool. It helps organizations manage customer data, track interactions, and enhance satisfaction efficiently. As customer relationships deepen, the amount of data generated increases, necessitating effective management for actionable insights and informed decision-making.

Proper organization and security of Salesforce data is crucial for smooth operations, especially as it grows. Implementing strategies like data archiving and backup solutions ensures compliance, maintains system performance, and supports strong customer relationships. By optimizing Salesforce data management, businesses can harness the full potential of their customer relationships. Importance of Efficient Data Management in Salesforce

Importance of Efficient Data Management in Salesforce

Managing Salesforce data isn’t just about keeping things organized, it’s a cornerstone of a thriving sales operation. While streamlined processes are a significant advantage, the real value lies in how well your data supports your sales teams in achieving their goals.

When you dedicate resources to managing your data effectively, you enhance its quality, giving your team a clearer picture of the sales journey. Reliable, accurate data helps you make smarter decisions, boosts CRM adoption, delivers a better experience for your customers, and ultimately drives revenue growth.

With a structured approach to Salesforce data management, you can ensure your records are always up-to-date, comprehensive, and free from errors. This level of data integrity empowers sales teams to make well-informed choices, align with business objectives, and close deals more efficiently.

Common Data Management Challenges in Salesforce

Managing data in Salesforce presents unique challenges due to its widespread usage within organizations and the diverse types of data it handles. These challenges can disrupt processes, and decision-making, and even compromise data security if not addressed. Here’s a closer look at the common obstacles and strategies for overcoming them:

Fragmented Data and Silos

Data often becomes isolated across multiple Salesforce systems, creating inconsistencies and making it difficult to maintain a unified view. This fragmentation can limit visibility into operations, impacting decision-making and strategic planning.

Data Quality Issues

Sales teams depend on high-quality data that is accurate, up-to-date, and complete. Without it, decisions are based on flawed insights, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. Key issues include:

Duplicate Records: Duplicate customer entries can lead to redundant communications and inaccurate reporting.
Outdated Data: Using outdated contact or account information can result in missed deals and reduced customer satisfaction.
Inconsistent Data Entry: A lack of standardized data entry processes can lead to errors that undermine reporting accuracy.

Scalability and Volume

As organizations grow, data’s sheer volume and complexity increase, making management more resource-intensive. For some organizations, it also involves manually sorting through this increase in data, which is again prone to human error.

Data Loss and Backup Challenges

While many organizations assume Salesforce inherently backs up their data, it operates under a “shared responsibility” model. Salesforce ensures platform availability, but protecting and recovering user-generated data is the organization’s responsibility. Without a backup and recovery solution, businesses risk losing valuable data due to accidental deletion, overwrites, or cyberattacks.

Data Privacy and Security

Securing customer data is critical given increasing cyber threats and compliance requirements. Mismanagement or unauthorized access can result in breaches, legal liabilities, and damage to reputation.

Reusing Data Effectively

Organizations often struggle to reuse Salesforce data for analytics, AI, compliance, or customer service. Extracting, transforming, and sharing data across systems requires IT resources, APIs, and careful planning. However, challenges such as API limits, performance degradation, and multiple unauthorized copies of data can create operational inefficiencies and compliance risks.

Data Cleaning and Deduplication in Salesforce

Deduplication is one of the data cleaning practices to ensure records that exist only once in the real world are represented only once in the database. This concept is vital not only for improving CRM usability but also for efficient data management, particularly when considering backup and archiving strategies.

Why Deduplication Matters in Backup and Archiving

Optimized Storage Usage: Duplicate records inflate storage requirements, leading to higher costs for data storage and backups. Deduplication reduces the data footprint, ensuring unique records are stored and archived.
Accurate Backups: Backing up duplicate records results in redundant data, complicating recovery processes and creating confusion during selective or record-level recoveries. Cleaning duplicates ensures the backup reflects the most accurate and reliable dataset.
Efficient Archiving: When preparing records for archiving, deduplication helps identify and archive the unique, critical data required for compliance or long-term storage, avoiding unnecessary storage of redundant records.

Streamlined Recovery: In recovery scenarios, particularly selective or record-level recovery, deduplicated data eliminates the guesswork and ensures the retrieved record is singular and definitive.

Approaching Deduplication

Define Duplicate Criteria: Each object (e.g., Leads, Contacts, Accounts) may have different criteria for identifying duplicates. For instance:
- Leads: Email and company name.
- Contacts: Email and phone number.
- Accounts: Account name and domain.
Account for Deliberate Duplicates: Certain organizations, like those with regionally partitioned data, may allow duplicates intentionally for operational reasons. This needs to be factored into deduplication rules.
Leverage Salesforce Tools: Salesforce offers Duplicate Rules and Matching Rules as a starting point for detecting and managing duplicates. These can be customized to align with organizational needs.
Consider Third-Party Solutions: Advanced deduplication tools extend Salesforce’s capabilities, allowing admins to define granular criteria and automate cleaning processes.

A Holistic Approach to Deduplication and Data Management

Deduplication is more than just cleaning up records, it’s a foundation for better backups and smarter archiving strategies. Regularly reviewing and cleaning data, along with implementing effective deduplication rules, ensures businesses can meet their data protection goals while optimizing storage and maintaining compliance.

Data Migration in Salesforce

Data migration is a critical phase in Salesforce implementation. It involves transferring data from external sources to the Salesforce platform while ensuring it remains accurate, complete, and usable. A successful migration establishes a reliable CRM foundation for operational efficiency and better decision-making.

Goals and Challenges

Begin by assessing the quality of existing data, identifying duplicates, and addressing inconsistencies to ensure only actionable data is migrated. Migration goals should focus on relevance, accuracy, and compliance. Challenges, like managing complex datasets or ensuring security, require planning and effective tools.

Planning

Map legacy system fields to Salesforce objects, ensuring alignment with its architecture. For example, standardize fields such as emails or phone numbers to match Salesforce formats. Establish timelines, responsibilities, and a clear roadmap to guide stakeholders.

Testing and Validation

Conduct test migrations with subsets of data to identify issues early and refine processes. Post-migration, validate the data for completeness and consistency, checking for errors or discrepancies.

Automation and Post-Migration Steps

Automation tools for data extraction and loading improve efficiency, reduce manual effort, and minimize errors, ensuring accurate and timely data handling.

After migration, reviewing workflows, user access, and integrations is crucial to confirm proper system functionality.

DataArchiva supports compliance and cost optimization by archiving historical Salesforce data into low-cost storage, reducing storage costs, maintaining performance, and keeping active data organized for daily use.

Integration and Unified Management

Integrate Salesforce with other systems for real-time data flow and centralized management. This approach eliminates silos and supports consistent, accurate reporting.

Maintaining Data Integrity

Implement governance protocols to sustain data quality over time. Clean the database regularly, educate users on best practices, and set validation rules to prevent future issues.

Data Governance and Security in Salesforce

Every department in an organization, from sales and marketing to customer service, handles valuable data daily. While this data drives critical decisions and personalized experiences, its effectiveness and safety hinge on two questions: Is the data being used appropriately, and is it secure? Data governance and security are closely connected, governance defines the rules for responsible data use, while security ensures those rules are enforced by protecting data from unauthorized access and breaches.

At its core, data governance involves the policies and standards that guide how organizations manage and utilize information. It ensures data accuracy, protects privacy, and helps businesses comply with industry regulations, enabling responsible and effective data management.

Core Elements of Data Governance

Regardless of the industry, effective data governance policies typically address these five areas:

Access: Define who can view, edit, or use specific data.
Accuracy: Establish measures to keep data current and error-free.
Privacy: Protect sensitive information, especially customers’ personally identifiable information (PII).
Security: Implement safeguards to prevent data breaches or misuse, both internally and externally.
Retention: Determine how long data is stored and how it is securely disposed of when no longer needed.

Steps to Start Data Governance

Understand Your Data

Start by identifying all the data your organization uses and its current state. Collaborate with stakeholders to document how data is collected, managed, and applied across teams.

Adopt Standards

Define what quality data looks like for your business. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel; instead, leverage existing frameworks or best practices from industry peers to develop your policies.

Empower Your Team

Educate employees on the importance of data governance and how it impacts their roles. Provide clear guidelines for handling data and ensure they know how to report concerns or issues. A dedicated communication channel, like a Slack group, can streamline this process.

Review Regularly

Data governance isn’t a one-time effort. As your business and technology landscape evolves, revisit and refine your policies. For instance, the rise of AI tools may require new safeguards for data privacy and usage.

Track Success

Use metrics to measure the impact of your governance strategy. Indicators like reduced data errors, improved data quality scores, or cost savings can show progress and highlight areas for improvement.

Automation and Integration for Streamlining Salesforce Data Management

Managing Salesforce isn’t just about keeping up but about staying in control. As data grows and compliance gets tougher, automation and integration make backup and archiving simpler, smoother, and stress-free.

Automating Salesforce Data Backup

A backup strategy ensures that Salesforce data, metadata, and files are consistently protected from accidental deletions, data corruption, or cyber threats. Automation minimizes the risks of human error and enables:

Scheduled Backups: Predefined intervals ensure consistent data snapshots without disrupting ongoing operations.
Selective Recovery: Automated systems allow granular recovery at the record or object level, reducing downtime and restoring business-critical information swiftly.
Compliance-Friendly Practices: Automatically generated audit trails and backup logs help meet stringent regulatory requirements.

Automation tools also provide the flexibility to scale backup operations as data volumes grow, ensuring long-term sustainability.

Effortless Archiving Through Integration

Data archiving complements backups by addressing storage limitations and compliance needs. With Salesforce data often exceeding storage limits, integrating archiving solutions is essential to reduce operational strain while maintaining data accessibility. Key benefits include:

Effortless Data Offloading: Archiving older, infrequently accessed data reduces Salesforce storage usage, optimizing performance.
Retention Policy Automation: Integration ensures archived data adheres to retention schedules, satisfying compliance mandates without manual intervention.
Searchable Archives: Advanced integration supports indexed, searchable archives, ensuring quick retrieval without disrupting primary systems.

American Healthcare Archived 80 GB Of Salesforce Data With DataArchiva On AWS Cloud

Download the Case Study

Why Automation and Integration Matter for B2B Success

B2B organizations handle vast amounts of sensitive client and operational data. Inefficient data management can lead to compliance risks, reputational damage, and operational delays. By automating backup and archiving and leveraging seamless integration, businesses can achieve:

Operational Efficiency: Reduced manual workload frees teams to focus on strategic initiatives.
Business Continuity: Rapid recovery ensures minimal disruption during unexpected incidents.
Cost Optimization: Optimized storage and archiving help control Salesforce-related expenses.

Adopting a Salesforce data management strategy that leverages both automation and integration for backup and archiving transforms processes from a reactive necessity into a proactive business enabler. This ensures that your organization stays agile, compliant, and prepared in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Tools and Resources for Salesforce Data Management

Salesforce offers several tools to simplify the management of data within the platform. These tools are tailored for data import, export, and cleaning to ensure quality and usability. Below are the key tools available:

Data Import Wizard

Purpose: Easily import data into Salesforce.
Best For: Users who need to bring in data for standard and custom objects.
Features:
- User-friendly interface for importing files up to 50,000 records.
- Supports CSV files.
- Ideal for standard objects like accounts, contacts, and leads.
- Avoids duplication by identifying existing records.

Data Loader

Purpose: Handle large-scale data operations.
Best For: Advanced users managing significant data volumes.
Features:
- Bulk data importing and exporting (up to 5 million records).
- Options for data insert, update, delete, and upsert.
- Command-line interface for automation.
- Works with CSV files for flexibility.

Mass Transfer Records

Purpose: Reassign ownership of records.
Best For: Admins transferring large numbers of records between users.
Features:
- Allows ownership transfer for leads, accounts, contacts, and custom objects.
- Helps maintain user-specific responsibilities.

Mass Delete Records

Purpose: Quickly remove unnecessary data.
Best For: Cleaning up unused or duplicate records.
Features:
- Delete records for specific objects like leads, accounts, and contacts.
- Provides filtering options to ensure precise deletions.

Data Export Service

Purpose: Generate data backups.
Best For: Regular or scheduled data extraction needs.
Features:
- Export data in CSV files.
- Schedule weekly or monthly exports.
- Ensures data availability for external analysis or backups.

Storage Usage Overview

Purpose: Monitor and optimize storage.
Best For: Managing Salesforce storage limits effectively.
Features:
- Provides insights into data and file storage usage.
- Helps prioritize storage optimization strategies.

DataArchiva for Monitoring And Maintaining Data Storage Efficiency In Salesforce

Salesforce data management strategy can be a challenge, especially as businesses grow and accumulate more information. DataArchiva is a powerful tool that helps solve this problem by archiving older or less frequently used data to secondary storage. This reduces primary storage usage and ensures that data remains accessible when needed for reporting or compliance purposes. By staying within Salesforce’s ecosystem, DataArchiva provides a cost-effective way for Salesforce storage management without relying on third-party solutions.

One of the standout features of DataArchiva is its ability to automate the archiving process. Administrators can set up rules based on data age or usage, allowing the system to automatically archive records without any manual intervention. This helps ensure that data retention policies are consistently followed. Additionally, the tool supports compliance with regulations like GDPR and HIPAA, offering secure storage and audit trails. For larger organizations, it can even integrate with external storage options like AWS or Azure, making it scalable for growing data needs.

With DataArchiva, businesses can improve system performance, reduce storage costs, and maintain easy access to archived data. The tool also includes reporting features that allow admins to monitor storage trends and archiving performance, making it easier to stay on top of data management. Whether you’re dealing with a large volume of data or need to meet long-term retention requirements, DataArchiva helps you keep everything organized and compliant, all while keeping your Salesforce environment running smoothly.

Best Practices for Salesforce Data Management

Effective Salesforce data management best practices ensure clean, actionable, and reliable information. Key practices include identifying essential data, improving quality, implementing governance, maintaining hygiene, integrating external data, and leveraging automation.

Identify Essential Data

Focus on collecting data that drives decision-making, including identity (e.g., contact details), descriptive (e.g., job titles), qualitative (e.g., customer sentiments), and quantitative (e.g., engagement metrics). Use surveys, online research, and records to gather and combine these data types for better insights and prioritization.

Improve Data Quality

Eliminate duplicates, standardize formats, and break silos by integrating team data. Share insights across departments for collaboration and audit data periodically to correct errors for accuracy and consistency.

Establish Data Governance

Follow data privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA by managing customer consent with Salesforce’s tools. A governance framework ensures compliance, builds trust, and protects sensitive information.

Maintain Data Hygiene

Conduct regular audits to uphold quality benchmarks such as accuracy, timeliness, and consistency. Archive outdated or irrelevant data, fix errors, and streamline records to keep your CRM optimized.

Integrate Third-Party Data

Centralize data by importing and exporting seamlessly using tools like Data Loader and Data Import Wizard. Automation reduces manual effort, ensures timely updates, and maintains secure backups.

Use Automation

Automate data management tasks with tools like DataArchiva for Salesforce to keep records updated, generate insights, and save time. Automation helps prioritize opportunities and improve data accuracy effortlessly.

Conclusion

Managing your Salesforce data effectively is essential for business growth and operational success. By focusing on improving data quality, ensuring compliance, and leveraging automation, organizations can turn their data into a powerful asset. Tools like DataArchiva simplify the process by providing cost-effective archiving solutions that reduce Salesforce storage management challenges while keeping important data accessible. This allows your team to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on strategic initiatives that drive value.

With a solution like DataArchiva, businesses can overcome storage limits, maintain system performance, and meet long-term data retention requirements. Whether you’re managing historical data or navigating complex compliance standards, DataArchiva helps you stay organized and efficient. By taking control of your Salesforce data, you enable your team to focus on growth and deliver exceptional results for your customers.

FAQs

Is Salesforce a database management?

Salesforce is not a traditional database management system (DBMS); it is a cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. While it stores data like a database, it focuses on managing customer interactions, automation, analytics, and app development.

Which is the best Salesforce data management tool?

While Salesforce offers native data management tools, third-party solutions like DataArchiva are often recommended for advanced needs. These tools provide enhanced capabilities for data archiving, compliance, and optimized storage management.

What are the different ways to manage Salesforce storage?

To manage Salesforce storage, you can archive old records and files, delete unused data, and optimize data models by removing unnecessary fields or objects. Implementing selective data recovery methods can also help free up space. Additionally, you can purchase extra storage or use external storage solutions like Salesforce Big Objects or third-party integrations for long-term data retention.

Explore DataArchiva for Salesforce Data Management

Protect your Salesforce data with automated backups, granular recovery, and security.

Get the App

Table of Content

DataArchiva offers three powerful applications through AppExchange including Native Data Archiving powered by BigObjects, External Data Archiving using 3rd-party Cloud/On-prem Platforms, and Data & Metadata Backup & Recovery for Salesforce.

For more info, please get in touch with us at [email protected]

Quick Links

Help?

Terms & Conditions

Cancellation Policy