During this roundtable, customers shared their methods for keeping data clean!
A few stats:
Of the attendees at the roundtable...
18% work on data cleanup Daily
6% Weekly
29% Monthly
29% Quarterly
And the rest don't have a set schedule!
What's Worked Well?
The Bay Area Apartment Association shared the common reports that they run and processes they've implemented to help keep their data clean.
Look for Duplicates. Does the name have a -1 or -2 by it? It's possibly a duplicate signup! It's a best practice to verify any new signups against your current members list. Whenever you get a new signup in your Recent Signups list, open the member list in a new tab, and search for the recent signup's name to ensure there isn't already a record for that person or company in your database.
Tip: Search for - 1 or - 2 in your main members list to look for records that may have slipped through:
Define a Process for Data Cleanup.
BAAA has a policy that recent signups should not be cleared until these things on the record are checked and verified: Billing Address, Billing Contact (for a Company record), Valid Phone number, and Email address.
Tip: Define what fields must be checked prior to approving a new signup, and note the Process in Novi Notes, so it's always on hand for reference!
Create Reports to look for Missing Important Information
Then, define a process for how often you run the reports and work on updating the data. Some examples of custom reports you can create to find missing information are:
Missing Primary or Billing Contact
Individuals that have a phone number, but don't have an email address
Records missing Custom Fields that are important to your organization, such as unit count, or number of employees
If your memberships are company-based, look for people not tied to a company record
Organize your reports so they're easy to find.
Use a naming convention that works for you. If you plan to use the report monthly, include the word monthly in the report title.
Create a "Data Clean Up" group category so you can quickly filter to the reports you're looking for.
Bookmark your most-used reports for even easier access!
Remember, Data cleanup doesn't have to be just correcting your Member demographics, it can also involve event attendance (making sure attendees are attached to a record in the system), as well as tracking, bounced email addresses.
One last tip! Don't try all of these at once - work on implementing one or two new processes, and add more in the future!
Additional Resources:
Use these data cleanup tools within Novi to help keep your data squeaky clean: