Need CRM Data Help? 11 Company Audits To The Rescue!

A Refresher – What is a CRM Data Audit?

A CRM data audit is a review of your system’s data and processes. We review these to ensure our system is clean so we can segment and report on company, contact, and deal data.

Table of Contents

Company Audits vs. Contact Audits

Please note that company audits are very similar to contact audits, except they are on the company object. You will see a large number of similarities if you already read the other post. If so, take a gander nonetheless to ensure that you set up and save filters so you can execute your company audits.

1. Industry Unknown

For many companies, market segmentation by industry is a key piece of CRM data. Check for companies that don’t have the industry field filled out. This also applies to other key pieces of data that you use for segmentation.

Filter: Industry = Unknown

2. Lifecycle Stage Unknown

Identify companies that have not yet been categorized by their position in the sales cycle, so that you can tailor your communications accordingly.

Filter: Lifecycle = Unknown

3. Unknown Country

Identify companies that do not have a country listed and update accordingly. We want to ensure we can filter CRM data by country for analysis, territory planning, targeted marketing campaigns, and more.

Filter: Country = Unknown

4. Proper Country

If you don’t have a dropdown select for countries, you should check for companies that have an improper country listed. For example, every piece of CRM data should read either: US, USA, United States, United States of America, etc., and only one of those. 

Check out our post, 7 Great Moves To Make Before You Buy a CRM, to learn more about data standardization. 

I would recommend that if you don’t already have a standardized list of country names somewhere, that you grab a list from the Internet to copy and paste.

Filter: Country ≠ United States, Canada, Japan, etc.

5. Unknown State/Province 

Ensure that all companies have properly identified states or provinces listed so that you can filter and target appropriately. You might only care about places in the United States or you might also care about provinces in Canada and Australia. If you care about all three:

Filter: Country = United States AND State is Unknown

OR

Country = Canada AND State is Unknown

OR

Country = Australia AND State is Unknown

6. Proper State/Province

Just as previously noted above, confirm that your database has all of the states and provinces listed properly if you need them listed for various countries.

Filter: Country = United States AND State/Province ≠ AK, AL, AR, etc. 

OR

Country = Canada AND State/Province ≠ ON, AB, QB, etc.

OR

Country = Australia AND State/Province ≠ NSW, QLD, VIC, etc.

7. No Associated Contacts

Identify companies that aren’t associated with a contact. Then, find out if these companies should be in the system or not. If so, find contacts for them so your team can start to market and sell to them. 

Filter: Associated Contact = Unknown

8. No Associated Deal

Check that any company listed with a Lifecycle of Deal is actually tied to a deal. This is a great audit because you may find that companies are accidentally disassociated from deals. Other times, it may help you to discover that a deal was deleted.

Filter: Lifecycle = Deal AND Associated Deal = Unknown

Another iteration, which depends on your CRM is:

Filter: Lifecycle = Deal AND Number of Associated Deals = 0

9. Proper Owner

You want to ensure that companies are assigned to the proper owner so that they receive the proper attention and follow-up.

Just as with the contacts audit, this filter is probably the most extensive because you have to adjust it every time you have a new rep join. This filter set up depends on how you organize your territories. For this example, I assume that the team’s territory is organized by state and country.

For United States based Reps:

Filter: Company Owner = Rep Name AND State ≠ *insert state names they oversee*

For reps outside the United States that get assigned an entire country, use:

Filter: Company Owner = Rep Name AND Country ≠ *insert country names*

Notice how we use the does not equal symbol. In this example, we want to see a certain rep where they are assigned to the wrong state or country. We do not need to see the proper associations. We need to see the wrong ones so we can fix them.

10. Unknown Owner 

To ensure we have the right owner for each company, we must also check where there is no one assigned.

Filter: Company Owner = Unknown

11. Newly Created Companies – Last Week

This is a bit of a catch all to ensure that we didn’t miss anything with any of the above audits.

Ensure that all new companies added to your CRM have standardized data filled out (e.g. state, country, etc.) and are properly assigned to team members.

Filter: Create Date = Last Week, then sort by the necessary fields.

Wrap Up – CRM Data Audits

Think about other CRM data that is unique to your system and set up an audit for those key fields. Perhaps you track revenue by company, if they are a public or private company, or if they are a target company. 

I stated this in the contact audit post, but it bears repeating: it’s important to have accurate data in your system so your teams can execute as quickly and efficiently as possible.