Manage Large Volume Data Archival in Salesforce using Big Objects

Have you ever paid attention to what’s the most difficult aspect of using the Salesforce cloud platform? Is it record creation, file management, data storage, or something else? Well, these past couple of years, a lot of users have realized that data management in Salesforce has become complex and messy. And there’s just one simple reason behind this: having a multitude of data in the data storage that isn’t used anymore.

Not just Salesforce data storage limitations, this voluminous data can also prove to be a pretty expensive affair, especially when it is being generated by a large number of users & applications. This can either be in the form of additional data storage charges or be in the form of breach of governance limitations in Salesforce. In short, if your enterprise is already at that stage where the redundant data is creating hassles for you, it may be time you looked for an effective data archival strategy for your Salesforce system.

Why is Data Archival in Salesforce Fruitful?

Large data volumes can result in slower reports, query performance, & list views, which impact user experience; a problem which can be tackled through archiving
Cleaning up unwanted data reduces clutter for users & drives better Salesforce adoption
Data archiving gives your enterprise better control over the business processes
Archiving legacy data also helps in reducing the data storage costs
In a way, archiving facilitates long-term retention of data, keeping it safe to an extent

Now we’re sure your enterprise has a dynamic data archiving strategy in place, considering all the important aspects of data storage in Salesforce, the storage limits, the data usage trends, & the future implications. But off-late a slightly different aspect of data archival in Salesforce has been steadily gaining traction: the use of Salesforce’s big data-based Big Objects.

According to Salesforce, a Big Object stores & manages massive amounts of data on the Salesforce platform through which users can archive data from other objects or bring massive datasets from outside systems to get a full view of their customers. The secret to Big Objects’ power lies behind the fact that it provides consistent performance, whether the enterprise has 1 million records, 100 million, or even 1 billion. The advantage of storing data in Big Objects is that data remains within Salesforce and is easily queryable & retrievable on demand.

Also Read: Salesforce Big Objects: A Comprehensive Guide To This Amazing Salesforce Solution

Using Big Objects for Salesforce Data Archival

Now before you go around worrying about creating an archival strategy around Big Objects, you must be made aware of the presence of DataArchiva, the enterprise-grade data archiving application for Salesforce. This AppExchange solution helps users store their legacy compliance data seamlessly within Big Objects, keeping the archived data highly secure because it never leaves the Salesforce platform. Also, since there are no integrations & limits to slow the archival process down, DataArchiva is a complete crowd-pleaser.

Be it standard Big Objects or custom Big Objects, both can be easily leveraged to archive the data when using DataArchiva. By periodically archiving historical data into Big Objects, this cost-effective solution enables users to potentially bring down their enterprise’s data storage costs by nearly 85%-90%. Moreover, the CRM application performance never takes a blow, ultimately allowing users to store billions of data records according to their business needs.

Let’s Discuss a Simple Use Case

The Connecticut Department of Labor (CTDoL) was having a tough time managing its growing data in Salesforce. Using Salesforce Service Cloud & Live Agent to offer unemployment benefits to citizens, it was dealing with the sensitive data of many citizens. Purchasing additional data storage was expensive & deleting old data (already settled claims, old records, chat histories, etc) was not an option because of the mandatory seven-year data retention policy as per the Federal law.

Needless to say, this is why CTDoL was on the lookout for an easily-accessible solution that was secure, scalable, & offered long-term data retention. And it had to be US Government Cloud certified as well. These were some of the reasons CTDoL ended up choosing DataArchiva as its data archival enabler & using Big Objects to archive the data. DataArchiva met all the federal government data security standards along with data privacy & data retention requirements.

Since Big Objects were already natively integrated with Salesforce, getting DataArchiva up & running for CTDoL wasn’t much of a challenge, allowing it to archive all historical claims, old records, & discussion history data natively in its own Salesforce environment. Moreover, DataArchiva’s other features like auto-archiving, one-click restore, any data type support, & bulk archive/restore also impressed CTDoL immensely, helping it meet its complex data archiving needs in Salesforce quite easily.

Hope this easy-to-understand customer use case showcased the amazingly top-notch data archiving capabilities of DataArchiva beautifully. Because when it comes to using Big Objects for archiving legacy data, enterprises usually face a dearth of solutions that have that kind of features & functionalities. If you were also looking for a strategy that would allow you to use Big Objects for Salesforce data archival, please get in touch with us & let us elucidate why DataArchiva will be a perfect fit for your organization.