As of late, you may not find an enterprise that will not be able to run without data, whereas much of this data is generated over cloud-based CRMs, ERPs, Accounting applications, HR apps, and more. Many CRMs like Salesforce use this data for enterprise decision-making, and this is how modern-day businesses run.
Effective data management can be a crucial approach for organizations that depend on Salesforce, and it is highly challenging. In case if you do not have advanced data management and security practices, there are chances that you do not get the full value out of your investment into siloed data. At a higher level, you may also explore the best practices in enterprise data management by specifying a data strategy, proper data classification, security, data backup, instant recovery, and reuse of data. Let us further explore each of these aspects of data management in more detail.
Data Strategy
An ideal data strategy of an organization must explain how you can gather data on the Salesforce platform and how to use it effectively by keeping all the users on the same page. A reliable and all-inclusive data strategy is essential for the smooth operations of any organization.
Data Classification
Proper data classification is also critical to understanding what data an organization has and where it resides. There are various data classification methods, which different types of enterprises use based on their data processing needs. Ideal data classification will help to determine which data you have to archive, keep, or delete. Enterprises must also classify the data to make it more usable for informed business decision-making. Classification will also enhance data security and help meet compliance needs.
Data Security
Data security is important to ensure that the custom data kept on Salesforce is safe and cannot be easily stolen by cybercriminals looking for vulnerable systems to steal data. These threat actors are now targeting the cloud applications increases, and also, with many internal Salesforce users too out there, the likelihood of breaching the data security best practice is higher. So, you need to have a solid data security policy there in the first place.
Data Backup and Restoration
The majority of the IT organizations and technology companies have solid backup systems for running the on-premises applications. The proper backup will act as an insurance policy that can be used in case of any data loss or accidental data loss. In the case of Salesforce data, many IT professionals and admins assume that Salesforce properly backs their data, and it will be readily available when needed. However, this is not the actual case. IT teams have to be proactive in maintaining a proper data backup and restoration plan for Salesforce in case of any breakdowns.
Salesforce, as a provider, is also changing its support models in terms of data security and backup. Back in 2020 July, Salesforce discontinued their existing data backup mechanism and alternatively introduced another one towards the end of 2021. However, throughout these times, Salesforce always encouraged the users to check out the different third-party tools available at the App Exchange for backup and recovery. However, none of these are endorsed by Salesforce. Next, data reuse is also one objective of salesforce data backup and restore initiatives.
Data Reuse
Business users usually leverage historical data for their analytical and decision-making purposes. This data includes customer service, audit, and compliance, sales, customer retention d data, product development, etc. The modern applications of AI and machine learning can take up this data and come up with insightful analytical reports for corporate decision-making. For this need, database admins should make this historical data available for this purpose.
Bud, accessing the data on Salesforce outside of this application may need some manual endeavor. The users of Salesforce CRM need to dedicate their time and development resource to extract, transform, and load data to create and maintain APIs. Many organizations are still not able to support the deployment of IT resources needed. As a result, there are a lot of business users who cannot take advantage of the Salesforce data in ways as it would substantially be beneficial to the company.
Even if organizations have sufficient resources for APIs and ETL, there are even more challenges that exist. If there are many users for systems accessing Salesforce data simultaneously, they may be restricted with API limits of the organization and have to pay more to upgrade it. Performance of Salesforce application also may tend to degrade in this case ending up in reducing productivity.
Also, the users who gain access to data tend to copy these into their own systems and folders. Enterprises do not have any idea as to how many such copies exist and where these all reside. This also may become a compliance challenge and further pose many data management and security challenges. All these will end up in operational inefficiency.
Getting Maximum Value
As seen above, one should use Salesforce data as a rich and insightful historical record of business activities. While you ack it up effectively, it becomes a lot more than just a storage of data. When used properly, such data is the foundation of a strong data management system and the source of truth for achieving analytical goals and more operational efficiency. Here are a few things you need to consider to ensure this operational efficiency with Salesforce backup.
- Backup frequency: Plan is based on the criticality of data and how much data loss you can afford at the maximum.
- Backup Location: It is the place where your Salesforce data backup is stored. This should be prone to destruction and has to be readily available for restoration.
- Data ownership: The best approach to backup data is to back it up to your own data lake on the cloud. When it lies in the AWS S3, GCP, or Azure cloud instance owned by your enterprise, then there is no need for any third-party API or ETLs.
Even though we have discussed a few, you can even benefit from more effective data management strategies and backup practices. You can also explore various App Exchange tools and compare their features to identify the best options.
