Today, IT Directors have a unique ability to impact revenue growth. 88% of sales teams at leading companies use BI or analytics tools to access customer data and grow their numbers, according to Bluewolf’s survey of over 1,000 Salesforce customers. But if data is duplicated, inaccurate, or housed in many unintegrated systems, access to data breaks down and the whole company suffers.

How can you eliminate bad data and enable your company’s salespeople?

Investing in data cleansing is the most effective way to differentiate your business and improve employee and customer experience. Here’s how you can get started cleaning up your data.

1. Analyze your existing data. 
   Take time to answer a few establishing questions, such as:

   What kind of data are you analyzing? 
   How is it collected?
   Does this data have any special characteristics? 

2. Create a cleanse plan.
   Map out a project plan by asking:

   What data needs to be cleansed, removed, or enriched?
   Which business process are causing data quality issues?
   What tools do we need to execute this cleanse?

3. Define a data governance strategy. 
   Determine a strategy for maintaining clean data.

   Have all business processes been redesigned — and are there checks in place to keep future changes to these processes from adding bad data?
   Has data validation been added at system entry points?
   Does the data have an owner, and is he or she incentivized to keep it clean?

Have these or other data cleansing strategies worked for your company? Share your story below. For more insights into how IT professionals at leading companies are driving ongoing innovation with Salesforce, download The State of Salesforce for IT.