We all know, investing in a new CRM is one of the biggest investments a membership organisation can make. Not just in terms of value, but in time, effort, disruption, risk, the list goes on…
It’s an immense undertaking.
The new system promises more efficient processes, improved member experience, better reporting, more features, more integrations, all the bells and whistles! The business case makes sense, and the expected benefits are huge.
But… there’s often a critical piece of the CRM implementation that gets overlooked. That often inhibits your ability to ever realise those expected benefits…
Data.
Don’t migrate the problem
However fancy your new CRM is, it’s only as good as the data you’re importing into it. It’s not simply a case of moving information from one system to another unfortunately.
Membership organisations contain years, if not decades of information about their members. The quality and accuracy of this data is what makes or breaks a project.
Over the years, new processes are introduced, new fields added, old fields becoming redundant, teams change, roles change, mechanisms for members to update their information changes. Baggage is accumulated.
This can leave you with:
– Contacts which are no longer relevant
– Duplicate contacts and organisations records
– Incomplete contact preferences/interests
– Incomplete and inconsistent records
– Outdated contact information
– Contacts linked incorrectly to Organisations
– Free-text fields which should be structured
– Fields no one uses or understands anymore
Moving this information to your new CRM doesn’t fix this. It simply moves the problem from old to new.
Key questions to ask when reviewing your data
- Migrate it? – If it’s important and confidence in quality is high, bring it over.
- Cleanse it? – If it’s important information but confidence in accuracy is low, clean it.
- Archive it? – If it’s important but not required in the new system, store it.
- Leave it behind? – If it doesn’t serve a purpose, bin it.
Having these questions in mind can substantially improve the quality of and confidence in the data worth moving across.
Why is it important?
The quality of the data you import into your CRM directly impacts your ability to achieve the system’s expected benefits and provide a return on investment.
- Want to take advantage of your new ability to segment members and provide personalisation? Accurate member data is essential.
- Want better visibility and reporting? Your data needs to be consistent and trusted.
- Want to implement automation to improve processes? Nothing breaks automation faster than inaccurate statuses, dates and classifications.
Your data determines how effectively you can use those shiny new features.
Summary
During a CRM migration it’s natural to want to bring over all that legacy data ‘just in case’.
But as we often see, less can be more.
A CRM migration is a rare opportunity to stop and look at your data and ask:
Do we use it? Do we need it? Is it reliable? Does it support what we’re trying to achieve?
If the answer is no, then it’s worth questioning whether it should move across to your new system.
Bonus point
The sooner you start looking at your data ahead of a migration, the better. The last thing you need in the lead up to migration is identifying thousands of duplicate records, poorly populated fields, and inconsistent organisation relationships.
Treating your data like an asset will go a long way in achieving your expected benefits.
Memberlytics is a specialist data and analytics consultancy dedicated to the membership and association sector. Contact us to discuss how we can help.
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