Data Management Best Practices CRM Field Guide Chapter 18

It is week 18 in the review of the CRM Field Guide chapters from the book – The CRM Field Guide – How to CRM Like an MVP with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This week it is the 28 page Data Management Best Practices chapter.

There is that old expression – what goes in must come out, or the slightly pessimistic version – garbage in, garbage out. I think the realistic approach is neither pessimistic or optimistic. It is just simply – Good data management is hard and it takes work. It won’t happen by accident. It requires processes, business standards, educating users and regular monitoring and maintenance. The data in your CRM system is the core of your company’s intellectual property. There is a strong connection between the usefulness of the data and the number on the bottom line of your financial documents.

Chapter 18 in the Field Guide covers the following topic areas: Import Data Wizard, Duplicate Detection and Bulk Deletion.

The built-in data import feature in CRM 2011 is substantially stronger than what was available in CRM 4. However, users can offer experience quite a bit of frustration with the import process dealing with failed imports or failed rows. Understanding the basics of preparing the import file will go a long way in delivering successful imports. The author 9 tips for preparing the import file. Three of them are shown below.

Dynamics CRM 2011 Import Wizard Tips

The chapter also walks you through the Export to Excel for Re-import process. One of the gotchas in this process is to not open the file when it is downloaded. This will generally result in an error. The recommended practice is to save it first to your computer and then open it in Excel.There is another approach when you run into this error which I covered in a previous blog posting – Export to Excel – Unblocking your way to success