“Did you update Salesforce?” If you’re a Salesforce user – especially in sales – you’ve probably been asked this question more times than you can count. Keeping Salesforce updated with the latest data often feels like a tedious task that takes time away from your “real” work, but in reality, it’s crucial. Successful teams rely on real-time, accurate data from their CRM to drive decisions and maintain high data hygiene standards, ensuring that every interaction is informed by the most current information available.
However, while current Salesforce data is undeniably valuable, it lacks historical context. As soon as data is updated, the previous data is gone (or becomes difficult to find). This makes it harder to track changes over time, identify emerging trends, or uncover patterns that could inform future strategies. Without a comprehensive view of data history, we miss opportunities for deeper insights and more effective planning.
Why Historical Data Matters
Historical or time-series data records values over specific intervals, providing a comprehensive view of how these values evolve. Here’s how incorporating historical data into your Salesforce strategy can transform your insights.
1. Identifying Trends and Patterns
Trends often reveal themselves only over extended periods. By analyzing historical data, you can identify patterns that indicate customer behaviors, market movements, and sales performance.
For instance, understanding seasonal variations in sales or recognizing a gradual shift in customer preferences requires a historical perspective. By analyzing multiple years of data, you can determine whether fluctuations are typical for a particular season or if they signify an unusual trend.
2. Spotting Anomalies and Outliers
Anomalies or outliers are data points that deviate significantly from the norm. Without a historical baseline, it’s nearly impossible to detect these irregularities. Historical data lets you establish what “normal” looks like, making it easier to spot when something is amiss.
For example, a sudden drop in sales might seem alarming, but if historical data shows a similar drop at the same time each year, it can be attributed to a seasonal trend rather than a fundamental change in customer behavior. This is crucial for proactive problem-solving and preventing minor issues from escalating.
3. Making Informed Decisions
Historical data provides the context needed to make more informed and strategic decisions. Take a marketing campaign, for example. Salesforce is great for tracking the immediate results of campaigns, such as leads generated, conversion rates, and ROI. However, long-term trend analysis might require combining Salesforce data with other datasets (e.g., market research customer feedback over time) to identify shifts in customer preferences or market conditions that are not immediately apparent in campaign data.
4. Improving Forecast Accuracy
Forecasting relies heavily on past performance. Historical data allows for more accurate predictions by revealing long-term trends and cyclic patterns. By examining data points collected at consistent intervals, time-series analysis captures underlying trends, such as upward or downward trajectories in sales or opportunities over time.
It identifies patterns like seasonality (recurring changes that happen at regular intervals, like holiday sales spikes) and cyclical movements (longer-term trends tied to business cycles). This enhances the reliability of sales forecasts, budget planning, and resource management.
Where Can You Access Historical Data in Salesforce?
Most CRMs like Salesforce only contain the current state of your data. Or, if they do track historical data, you’re limited in terms of what you can track, how long you can track it for, and how you can access it. So, if you can’t access historical data from your live production environment, where can you access it?
The answer lies in your backups.
When you think of all the reasons to back up your data, analytics probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. In reality, though, backups possess several unique qualities that make them ideal for fueling insights. Backups provide data in a time-series format, capturing information that evolves over time.
By using backup data that is already fully assembled, you also eliminate the manual effort of preparing the data on your own and can start deriving insights faster. Finally, backups contain all of your data-they’re complete. This means that you have a complete repository of all historical data whenever you need it.
Final Thoughts
To learn how you can leverage your Salesforce backups to fuel insights, check out our website or register for our upcoming Dreamforce session: Know Your Past, Fuel Your Future: Historical Data for AI.