In the dynamic digital landscape, the intersection of data quality and artificial intelligence (AI) is pivotal for organizational success. In a Salesforce context, there is a symbiotic relationship between Einstein, a cutting-edge AI system, and Data Cloud. It underscores the indispensable role of high-quality, complete, and accurate data in unlocking the full potential of AI-driven insights and interactions with customers and prospects.
This article will delve into how data quality affects these two new features – sharing how bad data is impacting you and how Einstein and Data Cloud could take your organization to the next level.
What is Data Quality?
If you’re like many people, when you hear the words “quality data,” the first thing you think about is duplicate records. In reality, that’s only the beginning. Here are a few other things to think about when looking at the quality of data in your CRM:
- Completeness: Are there important pieces of data that are missing? Do you have enough information about your customers and prospects to understand what they are looking for?
- Accuracy: Do you have current and accurate data on your customers and prospects? Or would your emails bounce since the customer or prospect has moved on to a different company? Complete data only helps when it is also accurate.
- Timeliness: Are you tracking the right data in a manner that will enable you to have time sensitive conversations with your customer and prospects to help you close a new deal or an upsell?
Bad Data Causes Bad Results
Bad data not only creates inefficiencies, it also wastes people’s time, fosters poor decision making, and puts an unnecessary strain on organizational resources. Worse yet, those poor decisions most often cost companies real money.
Poor quality data is dangerous for organizations. You need to transform bad data into quality data so you can rely on it to improve company performance. There are some long-term strategies you can implement to maintain quality data – but it’s not a one-stop destination, it’s an ongoing journey.
Accurate Data is the Path to Better Financial Performance
Most credit British Mathematician Clive Humby with coining the phrase, “Data is the new oil” in 2006, and as Forbes put it in 2022, “Like oil, data is valuable, but if unrefined, it cannot really be used.”
However, unlike oil, which is a limited resource, data seems to be limitless. Based on current projections, the amount of data being created worldwide in 2023 is approximately 120 zettabytes. And that’s expected to grow to over 180 zettabytes by 2025. (One zettabyte is approximately equal to 1,000 exabytes or 1 billion terabytes, and a terabyte is 1 trillion bytes.)
It’s necessary to point out that data is constantly changing. Organizations that are leaders in their industries are harnessing the power of their data and are able to react when needed. More importantly, those organizations are acting proactively, anticipating shifts, predicting the future, and making changes in anticipation of things to come. Even with quick reaction times, losses from poor quality of data can still occur.
It should come as no surprise that organizations who proactively address data quality will not only have higher quality data, but also a substantially lower financial impact due to poor data quality. It should also not be surprising that the sooner you formulate and activate a plan to increase and maintain data quality, the fewer negative issues you will experience when it comes to utilizing your data as you push to grow your organization.
Salesforce Einstein: Artificial Intelligence for Everyone?
Salesforce AI delivers trusted, extensible AI grounded in the fabric of our Platform
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The Einstein messaging is pushing the same core value of trust that Salesforce has been driven by for many years. It’s clear that Einstein can create content and interactions with customers and prospects that are relevant and more timely (i.e. faster) than humans are able to do so. It’s also clear that everything Einstein creates is based upon the data in the Salesforce instance it is installed in.
Who remembers the acronym, GIGO? When computer systems were first being used in business settings, many people had the belief that GIGO was Garbage In, Gospel Out. Most everyone believed the results a computer-generated report shared. In time, the second “G” shifted from “Gospel” to “Garbage” as people realized the computer was simply aggregating the data it had access to much quicker than humans were able to do so.
Is it possible that we are at that same tipping point with AI? The data being input has to be complete and accurate for the results coming out from AI to be trusted and valuable.
What’s All This Talk About Data Cloud?
Empower teams to engage customers, at every touchpoint, with relevant insights and contextual data in the flow of work.
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Then along comes Salesforce Data Cloud. This allows customer data from any source to be organized and segmented in a way that makes the most sense for how you run your business. And since it’s an open, extensible platform, you have the ability to enrich the data with any other sources of data you have access to.
Ultimately, you can create the ideal customer record that helps Sales, Service, and Marketing to perform their functions more intelligently and faster – driving more results to the company’s bottom line.
What’s in It for Me?
Just like nearly anything in this world today, the key to adoption is to solve the mystery of WIIFM: what’s in it for me?
To properly answer that question, you must examine your own specific situation. How reliable and accurate is your data? What are the best forward-looking approaches to maintaining quality data, regardless of the source?
The one common theme is that for data to provide valuable insights, the data itself must be complete, timely, relevant, and accurate.
Act now! Get a free Einstein Data readiness Assessment, register here for more details.
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Curious to learn more? Join us on January 16, 2024 for a Salesforce Ben webinar to learn more about data quality, Salesforce AI, Data Cloud, and our new AI-driven assistant, Diana!