Keeping your database clean.

By Nelia Roberts.

I chatted with a prospect today who was complaining that he keeps having to delete old information out of his database. Maximizer CRM has the solution to this – it’s called purging. What is important though is that you ensure that you have a backup of this data before you purge notes and document.

When it comes to saving emails it is important to keep a history of communication, but you only need the 1st and the last email, rather than the 11 in between too. Again, Maximizer has this wonderful feature that allows you to communicate back via MS Outlook and when you are ready you can “send & save to contact” in Maximizer. This way you don’t need to bounce between the 2 systems.

What is also important is that you must ensure certain types of functionality are activated on your database. Duplicate checking for one – this will allow users to ensure they are not “over capturing” information. However you need to give them the rights to add a duplicate in case this is actually a different person to the one they are capturing.

You should also clean up your company library – most marketing material has a limited shelf life and only lasts less than a year before it needs to be updated again. Delete the rest – you already have this backed up.

To ensure that users are using the system correctly check that it is set up correctly – keep only a few mandatory fields as this will surely stop them from entering information if it is too much, and too little can mean that the system is lacking information, rather than having too much. Also, do the users know how to use their “electronic office assistant”? If not, ensure that they are taught the way you expect them to use the system. Users can not only be taught how the system works but also how they are expected to make it work for your particular business.

You can also implement a User Defined Field where a user can allocate the word “Delete” in case this entry needs to be deleted. This way a system clean up can be done once a week. You should also search on duplicate entries in all your columns when doing a weekly/monthly clean up – this way you are able to catch them quickly!