Maintaining accurate and up-to-date data is more crucial than ever. Organizations rely heavily on their CRM systems to manage customer relationships, track sales, and streamline operations, but unreliable data gums up the works.
However, it’s not so easy to keep data clean and consistent. Each company has its own unique mixture of CRM software, integrations, required automations, and data priorities, which means the requirements for managing data never match exactly between two organizations.
Despite these differences, many CRM and CRM-integrated apps attempt to enforce one-size-fits-all standards in various situations. These standards can dictate how data is retained when duplicates are merged; the formatting choices for address and phone number data; how duplicates are matched; and how related contacts, companies, and deals are detected and linked.
Companies often find themselves forced to adhere to these conventions, facing the dilemma of either dealing with data standards that are imperfect for their organization, or altering their operations to conform to the imposed standards. Either scenario can be detrimental to business efficiency and accuracy. Without the ability to configure their data standards to their specific needs, companies suffer from poor decision-making and lost opportunities.
Every company deserves the right to handle its data in a way that best suits its operations and goals. Insycle empowers organizations to take control of their data management processes, ensuring that their CRM data is clean, consistent, and perfectly aligned with their business needs.
Many CRMs and data management apps impose set standards for various data fields and types on their users. This approach can create significant challenges, as the one-size-fits-all approach fails to meet the unique requirements of different organizations.
Take HubSpot’s automatic associations feature, for example. It matches contacts to companies using the company domain name. While this method works in some cases, it can fall short, particularly for international companies that may use several different domains—like nike.com and nike.co.uk. A contact’s email address might not match its company's URL domain for several reasons:
Similarly, when merging duplicates, HubSpot's default setting is to retain data from the most recently updated record. This approach can be problematic. Consider a scenario where the most recently updated record is missing crucial information:
This can result in the loss of important data, compromising the quality of your CRM.
RingLead, an integrated CRM data management app, presents another example. It allows users to “turn on” formatting for specific fields for the entire database, but it forces the field to be formatted to one particular standard, without any other options. Additionally, this formatting must be applied to every record in the database.
But this won’t work for many companies. Companies often require flexibility. Different departments might have varying requirements for formatting. For instance, employees in different countries may prefer to work with their standard local format. But being pigeonholed into rigid standards forces companies to accept them and find workarounds or to resort to time-consuming manual data maintenance to align their data with their specific needs.
The lack of flexibility in these CRM solutions can be a significant obstacle. Companies need the ability to tailor their data management practices to suit their unique operational requirements. Without this capability, they risk inefficient processes, data inaccuracies, and ultimately, lost opportunities.
Flexible data management configurations offer a multitude of benefits, addressing the challenges posed by rigid one-size-fits-all CRM solutions. Companies that have control over various aspects of their data updates can significantly enhance their operational efficiency and accuracy.
Flexible configurations allow businesses to tailor their data management processes to their unique requirements. For example, with customizable data association rules, companies can ensure that contacts are correctly linked to the appropriate companies, even if email domains differ due to personal email usage, multiple domain names, or subsidiaries. This precision prevents incorrect associations and maintains the integrity of your records.
Similarly, when merging duplicates, having the flexibility to choose which data to retain from each record ensures that important information is not lost. Instead of defaulting to the most recently updated record, businesses can set rules that prioritize data completeness and accuracy, preventing the potential loss of crucial information.
With the ability to customize formatting preferences, companies can cater to the specific needs of their integrated apps or to the preferences of different departments. This flexibility ensures that data is presented in the most useful format for an organization’s most important use cases for each data field.
Customizable data management configurations pave the way for effective automation. When data adheres to a company's specific standards, it becomes predictable and consistent. This predictability is crucial for integrating other systems and automating processes. For instance, automated workflows can be established to update records, merge duplicates, or format data according to custom rules.
Automation reduces the risk of human error and saves a significant amount of time. When you automate manual data management tasks, your teams are freed from mundane, repetitive work. This shift allows employees to focus on more strategic and impactful tasks, such as analyzing trends, developing relationships, and driving growth.
Manual data updates are often time-consuming and can be a morale-killing activity for employees. The repetitive nature of these tasks can lead to burnout and decreased productivity. By leveraging flexible data management configurations and automation, companies can improve employee satisfaction and efficiency. Teams can dedicate their time and energy to more meaningful and rewarding activities, fostering a positive work environment and driving innovation.
Insycle is a customer data management platform that gives you complete control over how your data is handled, even in the most specific situations. With Insycle’s deep configurability, you no longer have to adhere to whatever choices your CRM or other integrated apps make for you.
Let’s take a look at some examples of the ways that Insycle gives you advanced configuration options for data maintenance tasks:
Phone number formatting is crucial for ensuring data usability and integration functionality within sales operations. The chosen format directly impacts the readability of phone numbers and determines whether sales calling integrations can interface with the data. For instance, many calling programs require the E. 164 format to function correctly. But there are many formats the same phone number could take:
Often, CRM systems don't offer flexible phone number formatting options, leading companies to work with whatever format the customer has entered into a form. Even when CRMs do offer formatting, they frequently pigeonhole users into a single choice.
For example, HubSpot’s automatic phone number formatting feature, while advanced, may not always be ideal because it can set a different format for each country. HubSpot standardizes phone numbers based on the country code, so a U.S. phone number would be formatted as +1 (555) 555-5555, while a UK number would appear as +44 5555 555555.
When importing phone numbers into HubSpot, the system requires that you include the country code followed by the number itself. If there is an extension, it should be added in at the end of the phone number, such as +11234567890 ext123. Without the country code, HubSpot cannot apply advanced formatting options.
But with Insycle, you are in charge. Insycle provides complete control over phone number formatting, allowing you to update phone numbers in bulk to several popular formats, including E. 164 and U.S. standards.
For example, using Insycle to update phone numbers to the E. 164 standard would look like this:
|
Country |
Local Phone Number |
E. 164 Format |
|
USA |
415 123 1234 |
+14151231234 |
|
UK |
020 1234 1234 |
+442012341234 |
|
Lithuania |
8 601 12345 |
+37060112345 |
Insycle also enables you to ignore elements such as white space, letters, symbols, and separators in phone numbers, evaluating the raw number instead. This feature ensures consistency and accuracy across your database. Additionally, you can automate Insycle’s phone number formatting to run on a set schedule—hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly—keeping your data consistently accurate without manual intervention.
Duplicate companies in your CRM can cause significant issues, slowing growth and hindering efficiency across your organization.
In many CRM systems, the options for identifying and merging duplicate companies are limited. These systems typically use a few basic fields to identify duplicates, offering minimal customization. As a result, many duplicate records remain undetected because the CRM doesn’t have more advanced methods by which to identify them.
Additionally, many CRM systems can only match and merge two duplicate records at a time, while a single company record can potentially have multiple duplicates within the system. This process often requires manual comparison of records before merging them one at a time. Post-merge, you have little control over how data is retained, relying on the CRM’s default merging rules. These rules may not preserve the data you need, leading to potential data loss.
Insycle offers a solution by allowing you to merge duplicates in bulk, using any field in your database for duplicate matching.
Insycle provides advanced controls over how data in the matching fields is evaluated. You can choose between exact matches or similar matches and instruct Insycle to ignore symbols, numbers, or top-level domains (like .com). You can even match using only a portion of the field, such as the first few characters. This flexibility ensures you can build templates that identify many more duplicates than if you were using standard CRM deduplication features.
Insycle gives you complete control over how data is retained during merges. You can set advanced rules to determine the master record after the merge or configure rules for retaining data on a field-by-field basis. This ensures that all relevant data is preserved, even in complex situations. For example, with Insycle for HubSpot, you can retain all values in multi-select fields from all detected duplicates, whereas HubSpot’s default rules typically only retain values from the most recently created record.
With Insycle, you can fill in gaps in a CRM’s default behavior, giving you more control over how these critical data maintenance processes happen.
Insycle empowers your sales team with more context through customizable, complex association templates. This flexibility allows you to associate records using any field in your database, ensuring that your CRM reflects the true nature of your relationships and interactions.
With Insycle, you can use any field in your database as a potential matching field for associations. This capability ensures that no valuable connections are missed, providing your sales team with a comprehensive view of each contact's network and history.
Insycle also allows you to manage associations in bulk. You can add or remove both associations and association labels across many records simultaneously, making it easy to clean up errantly associated records. If you need to update your associations, Insycle can replace existing ones, allowing you to remove old associations and create new ones in a single action. This streamlined process saves time and ensures your data remains accurate and up to date.
One of the most powerful features of Insycle is its ability to identify and create missing associations based on existing ones. For example, if you have a contact associated with a company and that company is associated with a deal, but the contact is not directly associated with the deal, Insycle can detect this gap and automatically create the necessary associations in bulk. This ensures that all relevant records are interconnected, providing your sales team with a complete picture of each relationship.
Insycle’s association templates can be scheduled to run on a set schedule—hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. This automation ensures that your sales team can rely on the CRM to provide the most current and comprehensive information, enabling them to make informed decisions and maintain strong relationships with their clients.
Insycle's flexible association-matching and management capabilities give your sales team the context they need to succeed, enhancing their ability to nurture relationships and drive sales.
Highly customizable configurations for CRM data management offer significant advantages, allowing businesses to tailor their data practices to their unique needs. Insycle provides this flexibility, enabling companies to set their own rules for data association, duplication management, and formatting. This control helps maintain accurate, consistent records, facilitating seamless operations and enhancing decision-making processes.
Insycle goes beyond just customization. A comprehensive customer data management platform, it helps you audit your database, identify and fix issues, and build custom templates to address even the most complex CRM data challenges. Additionally, Insycle’s automation capabilities ensure ongoing data quality, freeing your team from tedious manual tasks and allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives that drive growth.
Ready to transform your CRM data management? Discover how Insycle can help you achieve cleaner, more accurate data and streamline your operations. Visit our website to learn more about our powerful solutions and start optimizing your data management today.