How to Evaluate your Data during a Data Conversion

In this Article we will cover: 

• Who are the best people within your organization to Evaluate your Data?
• Where to look within improveit 360 in order to thoroughly Evaluate all the Data?
• What’s the Data Eval Spreadsheet and how should it be completed?
• When we find data requiring “clean-up” which system should we make changes in?
• What does it mean when we “sign off” on the Data Approval Form?
• IMPORTANT DATE: The Date your Data was pulled from your previous CRM provider is critical when evaluating data. This Date is something every person in your company who is evaluating data needs to know.
• NOTE: Your Attachments and Files are not loaded during the initial data load. Our team can load a sample of attachments (upon request) but typically your Attachments, like Documents and Files are not loaded until your Final Data Load for Go-Live.  

 

Who are the best people within your organization to Evaluate your Data?

You may have several members of your staff involved with Data Evaluation – the more eyes, the better! Most likely, there isn’t one single person within your organization that knows everything!

Here are a few suggestions from our experience:

Verify Lead Sources – Marketing Manager

Verify Accounts, Contacts & Sales Opportunities – Office Manager and/or key Lead Entry personnel

Verify Sales Appointments – Appointment Scheduling Manager

Verify Sales – Sales Manager

Verify Payments (Payments) – Accounting

Verify Projects and Project Activities – Production Manager

How do we Evaluate the Data?

First, let’s open the system and review where these record types are located and what exactly to look out for! Most Data can be found be opening an Account (preferably a past Customer) and following their historical data.

Use the Navigation Items to locate the Accounts Tab, or use the Search bar at the top to search for a specific Customer by Name. 

If we start typing a customer's name in the Search bar the system will display possible matches. 

If we hover over the Account Name the search bar will expand to show related records like Sales Appointments, Sales and Projects. 

Click on the Account Name to go to the Account Details page. 

Data Eval Best Practice: Choose 10 past Customers to use as Data Evaluation examples. Pick your best customer, someone you have done a great deal of business within the past. Then pick your worst customer, someone you have done work for but the job didn't go so smoothly and there were change orders or service calls. Checking 10 different customers and looking for their unique records and data points will ensure you're thoroughly evaluating the data being loaded from your past CRM. You should be able to see each customers' journey in their historical data. 

From the Account record, click on Related to see the records attached to this Account. 

You'll want to click into each record. Here are some critical data points to look for on each record: 

Account – Primary Contact, Territory, Parent Account, Type

Contact - Type, Phone, Mobile Phone, Email, Opt Out data

Addresses – Type, Territory, Street Address, City, State, Zip/Postal Code, Country, County, Geolocation Status, Verification Status, Geolocation (Latitude and Longitude)

Sales Opportunities – Lead Source, Interested In, Result, Most Recent Sales Appointment, Taken On date and Taken By staff name.  Be sure to check ALL Sales Opportunities related to the Account. The Account can have more than one Sales Opportunity if they were Interested in more than one Product Category. 

Sales Appointments – Look for all Appointment records for an Account. 

Sales Appointment – Check the Set On Date, Set By, Sales Rep 1, Confirmed On date, Appointment Date/Time, Status, Status Details, Comments, are there any attached Quotes? 

NOTE: Status/Status Detail field mapping is one of the more important aspects of Data conversion. Be sure past Sales Appointments have been resulted in your past CRM. 

From the Sales Appointment page, look for related Quotes and Sales:

Sales – Look for an Account with multiple Sales. 

Sale - Check that the Sold On date, Sales Rep 1, Total, Status, Status Detail, Approved On date, Net On date, Complete On date

Sale Items - Click on the Sale Items tab to view the individual line items on each Sale. Verify the Product Name, Product Category, Quantity, Unit Price and Total for each Sale Item related to the Sale. 

From the Sale page note you can also see related Projects and Payments. 

Payments – Open each Payment record related to this Sale to check the Received On Date, Type, Type Detail and Amount. Should the Payment be related to a Project? 

Project – Back on the Account's main page, scroll down to find all of their Projects. Open each one to verify the data mapping. 

Be sure to check for the correct Status, Project Manager, Product Categories, Completed On Date, Project Price and Balance Due.

From the Project page, if you were tracking job costs in your last CRM, be sure to also Verify Project Cost records as well: 

Project Costs – check the following data points: Amount, Incurred On, Paid On, Payment Type and if this is related to a specific person, check the Staff field. 

Next from the Project page, click the Project Activities Tab to verify the individual steps within your Production process. 

Project Activities – Next look at the individual Activities on each Project. Look for who each Activity is Assigned To, the Start Date, End Date, Completed Date, and Comments. 

Open each Project Activity to see the Expected Duration in Days compared to the actual Duration based on the Start and End date fields. 

Products – Product Category, Product Name 

Next, use the App Launcher to go to Lead Sources.

Change your List View to look at the All Lead Sources list: 

Lead Sources - Look for Source and Source Type categorization. Note if this is how you want your Marketing grouped in Reports. Open each Lead Source record to spot check data. 

Check the Start Date and End Date, the Territories and (if you were tracking marketing spend in your last CRM) Total Cost. 

To see all the Appointments and Sales related to one Lead Source, you'll want to run the Lead Source Performance Report. Navigate to the Reports tab: 

Go to All Reports, then search for the Lead Source Performance report. 

This Report will give a summary of how many Appointments were Set, Issued, and Sold per Lead Source. 

Scroll to the right on this Report to see the Issued %, Demo %, Sold% and total Sales volume per Lead Source. 

Completing the Issue Tracker Spreadsheet - How to provide good Examples 

Next, let’s review how to provide your feedback on the Issue Tracker Spreadsheet… Remember, it is most helpful to our team if you can provide the ID of the Record (or closest related record) and a screen shot of the correct data in your previous CRM, for comparison.

Examples of data needed for each record type: 

Accounts/Contacts – Include Account Name and URL

Example: Mary Greever, https://my.lightning.force.com/lightning/r/Account/001am00001wXnbBAAS. We do not see any Notes for this Account but our current system shows 21 Note records for this person.

Sales Opportunity – Include Account Name and SO#, type and type detail.

Example: SO-59486 for Alexis Vecharis, lead Taken On date 10/2/2023. The Source and Source Type data do not match. It should appear as Source: Facebook and Source Type: Internet. 

Sales Appointment – Include Account Name and SA#

Example A: SA-59558 for Gunther Arbinger had an Appointment that was set to take place on 2/2/2023 but our current system shows it took place on 2/3/2023. 

Example B: SA-59652 for Robert Thompson has two Quotes attached in our current system but we do not see any Quotes attached in improveit 360. 

Sale – Include S#.

Example: S14856 the Sold On date and Net On date are correct but Paid in Full and Completed On dates do not match our current system. PIF should be 4/23/2025 and Final should be 4/30/2025. 

Payments – Include P# and Sale # as well as Received On date

Example: P-12098 for Sale# S-08685 has a Received On date of 3/12/2025 which the Type and Type Detail do not match our current system. Type should be Deposit and the Type Detail should be Check. 

Project – Include Project #.

Example: Project PRJ-18569 does not include the Project Manager data, our previous system shows Peter Project as the PM for this Project. 

Project Activities – Include PRJ# and Project Activity Name and Start Date.

Example: The "Approve Contract" step on PRJ-15846 shows the wrong time. It should be 12pm-6pm but it's showing 1pm-7pm. I found a few more Installations Assigned To Calvin with the same issue. Here are those Projects: PRJ18456 and PRJ184623.

Products – Include Product Name and Product Category.

Example: The Zoeller 1/2 HP High Efficiency Pump in our Waterproofing category should be in the Crawlspace Product Category. 

Lead Sources – Include Lead Source Name, Source and Source Type. 

Example: Facebook/Facebook. The Source Type should be Internet rather than Facebook and we captured approximately 1500 leads from this Lead Source. 

Data Scrubbing or “Clean-Up”

Every database has its own downsides. Perhaps your previous CRM system allowed Users to free-form type Source values instead of restricting values to a list. You may have a large number of Sources with similar (but not identical) Names. 

What can WE do if we find “bad data”?

You’ll want to make all corrections to your Data in your previous CRM system, prior to your final Data pull for improveit 360. The more Data Scrubbing or “Clean-Up” you can do in your previous database, prior to loading your improveit 360 system, the cleaner and more accurate your new improveit 360 system will be!

NOTE: improveit 360’s Data Conversion Team does not provide assistance with Data Scrubbing or Data Clean-Up.

Signing the Data Conversion Approval Form

What exactly are we “signing off” on when we sign the Data Conversion Approval?

Your company has confirmed that all the data needed to run your business has been mapped correctly to improveit 360. You confirm that the data has been properly prepared (your company has performed any necessary “data clean-up” in your previous CRM system). You confirm that your company’s data is ready for the final data load into your new improveit 360 system and that no additional mapping changes are needed. 

Let’s review the key data points you have verified and that you’re confident in the data mapping integrity.

Be sure you are ready to sign the Data Conversion Approval Form by reviewing and signing off on the following key data points…