Top 5 Free Salesforce Data Cleansing Tools Review

November 13, 2024
13 min

IBM research claims that 27% of business leaders do not know how corrupted their data is and that’s a big mistake. Missing, ambiguous, outdated, inconsistent, duplicate, and other faulty entries can easily disrupt your marketing and sales initiatives and damage your brand reputation.

Poor Salesforce data will result in a lack of centralized view of the prospect, inability to properly segment contacts for sales & marketing campaigns, spamming of your potential customers, and skewing open rates of email campaigns for adequate analysis.

Based on Gartner’s Data Quality Market Survey, organizations can lose up to $15 million a year on average because of poor data. And without the right Salesforce data cleansing strategy, all these data issues will repeat again and again.

But, how do you deal with identifying bad Salesforce data? Do you export .CSV files and use Excel functions and VLOOKUP to identify them? Or do you find corrupted data in Salesforce and merge it manually? And how much time and, consequently, money do you lose on these cleanup activities?

The good news: you can easily automate this process due to Salesforce data cleansing tools and significantly cut downtime on data hygiene. Moreover, even for free!

And together with our Salesforce data clean-up services and best practices outlined in our article, you can enhance your data cleansing tools and be proactive in dealing with data issues and simplify a data cleaning process.

Let’s go over all the discussed topics step-by-step:

  • What is bad data in Salesforce?
  • What is Salesforce data cleaning?
  • Benefits of Salesforce data hygiene
  • Top 5 free Salesforce data cleansing tools
  • Salesforce data cleansing best practices

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What is Bad Data in Salesforce?

There are a few common data-related errors in Salesforce among which are:

  • Duplicate records
  • Misprints and misspells
  • Formatting errors with phone numbers and addresses
  • Typos caused by importing and exporting data between platforms
  • Missing or inconsistent values for critical fields
  • Outdated and unused fields that simply mess up the database

To minimize the negative impact of poor datasets, you need to be proactive in gathering, auditing, and cleansing data. Moreover, in-time Salesforce deduplication & formatting can instill trust in your internal teams in your data and help maximize marketing investments.

Common Data-Related Errors in Salesforce

Common Data-Related Errors in Salesforce

Let’s dwell on some must-follow Salesforce data cleansing best practices for reducing the impact of poor data in any database.

 

What is Salesforce Data Cleaning Process?

 

Salesforce data cleaning process implies:

  • Data deduping – seeking and elimination of duplicate information
  • Data enrichment – filling out missing fields with missing information like gender, location, job title, records enhancement & updating of collected data
  • Data normalization – correction and standardizing on how data is structured across the dataset
  • Data validation – verifying the accuracy and consistency of data

 

In turn, all the data cleansing tools can be divided into several groups:

Salesforce Data Cleansing Tools Types

Salesforce Data Cleansing Tools Types

 

  • Solutions for CRM audit to detect broad errors
  • Tools to correct errors and missing fields
  • Deduplication products to remove duplicate information

 

The Salesforce data cleansing process also helps review the system users and their access levels. For example, get an insight on what CRM users left the company or changed their roles, understand if all administrators need access to certain data, see if there are any reports or test campaigns that need to be deleted. These and other processes can complicate the Org use and should be performed as part of your Salesforce data clean-up process.

If you can’t decide where to start with your data cleanup process, need help with identifying errors and main cause analysis to see the factors causing your data quality issues, complete a Salesforce audit to see the gaps in the system, seek Salesforce consultants’ assistance. They will help your organization set up and enforce effective data management policies.

As a part of our managed Salesforce data clean-up services, we offer ongoing data hygiene strategy consulting and guarantee personalized approaches that meet the specific requirements of your business.

 

Benefits of Salesforce Data Hygiene

 

Benefits of Salesforce Data Hygiene

Benefits of Salesforce Data Hygiene

There are several major advantages accurate data brings your organization.

  • Improved customer acquisition & engagement – Healthy data allows businesses to build a more precise prospect list and target the right people and, as a result, increase engagement rates.
  • Refined decision making – Due to solid data you can get a 360-degree view of your customer and address better their needs and concerns.
  • Increased employee productivity – Your sales & marketing teams can forget about wasting time on pursuing unqualified leads and switch focus to promising prospects.
  • Reduced sales cycle – Consistent Salesforce data allow prioritizing sales activities to close opportunities much more quickly.

 

Top 5 Free Salesforce Data Cleansing Tools

 

Duplicated information can cost companies up to 12% of their overall revenue that’s why data deduplication is one of the pillar aspects of data cleansing. Data deduplication, in turn, implies identifying and removing exact and fuzzy duplicates.

 

 

And to succeed with data deduplication activities, you not only need the tool that will help you get rid of the existing duplicates but also prevent your system from creating new ones.

Every business, depending on their goals, challenges and their database size will require different solutions. We’ve reviewed free Salesforce data cleansing solutions that will fit even start-up and non-profit companies with the minimum budget along with their ranking, features, pros, and cons.

1. Duplicate Check

 

Duplicate Check Home Page

Duplicate Check Home Page

 

AppExchange Rating: 4.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (237 reviews)

Founded: 2011

Location: The Netherlands

Supported Languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish

Salesforce Edition: Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Developer, Performance

 

Duplicate Check Features 

 

  • Free basic duplicate check functionality for up to 10, 000 records
  • Duplicate check: check for duplicate records across two different objects/platforms
  • Fuzzy matching: finds duplicate records with errors (spelling, typos, format, etc.)
  • Direct processing: analyzes incoming records with existing ones, if it is already existing, Direct Processing automatically merges the data on the spot (via API, web-to-lead, import, or Marketing integration).
  • Can be integrated via DC Apex API, REST API, Apex plugins, and Flow Actions.

 

Duplicate Check Pros:

 

  • Customer service has a very helpful sales and support team
  • Timely support
  • Saves company time by automatically deduping rather than manually having to process
  • Easy installation
  • Easy to adapt and use

 

Duplicate Check Cons:

 

  • Unable to add custom objects to the free version
  • Free version limits to the first 10,000 search results
  • Requires additional paid features
  • Occasionally brings up insufficient information

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2. DupeCatcher

 

DupeCatcher Home Page

DupeCatcher Home Page

 

AppExchange Rating: 4.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (138 reviews)

Founded: 2011

Location: Dallas, TX

Customer Support Languages: English

Salesforce Editions: Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Developer, Performance

 

DupeCatcher Features 

 

  • Identifies dupes in contacts, leads, accounts, and person accounts in real time
  • Blocks or merges dupes with existing records
  • Runs the app behind the scenes to collect data on dupes for analysis

 

 

DupeCatcher Pros

 

  • Works with new and existing accounts
  • Quick and easy to manage
  • Excellent customer support
  • React (report a dupe) and proactive (display the matching records before allowing the user to save the information)
  • Better for smaller organizations

 

DupeCatcher Cons

 

  • Necessary to purchase their additional app for certain services
  • Expensive after the max free limit is reached
  • History of technology issues
  • Lack of override button
  • Doesn’t support deduping of imports
  • No “record type” field category
  • Working out lots of kinks/system errors while updating system

 

 

3. AddressTools

 

AddressTools Home Page

AddressTools Home Page

 

AppExchange Rating: 4.8/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (237 reviews)

Founded: 2008

Location: The United Kingdom

Supported Languages: English

Salesforce Edition: Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Force.com, Developer, Performance

 

AddressTools Features

 

  • Country and state standardization
  • Simplifies reporting and enhances mapping solutions
  • Clean address reporting
  • Account, Contact, Contract, and Lead support

 

 

AddressTools Pros

 

  • Exceeds in validating and standardizing addresses in Salesforce
  • Known for address tools
  • Time-saving
  • Simple installation and use
  • Great tool for the Country fields in Salesforce
  • Responsive customer support

 

AddressTools Cons

 

  • Certain desired tools are only available by purchasing the Premium package

4. Sandbox Data Masker

 

AppExchange Rating: 5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (6 reviews)

Founded: 2018

Location: The USA

Supported Languages: English

Salesforce Edition: Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Developer, Performance

 

Sandbox Data Masker Features

 

  • Advanced Masking – masking customer email addresses in order to prevent spam, surgical precision. ‘Where’ clause granularity to mask specific records in your standard, custom, and packaged objects
  • Delete records and others
  • Purge unneeded data; remove records, files, attachments, and tasks
  • Temporarily mute automation
  • Prevent unintended execution of automation during masking
  • Fast and scalable
  • Post refresh automation
  • Automate the update of site settings
  • Reporting
  • Monitor that your sandbox is compliant with your masking standards

 

 

Sandbox Data Masker Pros

 

  • Flexible and fast
  • Manages and maintains documents and information
  • Valuable GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliance tool

 

Sandbox Data Masker Cons

 

  • Relatively new compared to other programs offered

 

5. RingLead Dupe Dive

 

RingLead Dupe Dive Home Page

RingLead Dupe Dive Home Page

 

AppExchange Rating: 3.6/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (14 reviews)

Founded: 2003

Location: New York, NY

Supported Languages: English

Salesforce Edition: Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Developer, Performance

 

RingLead Dupe Dive Features

 

  • Discover duplicate leads, contacts, and accounts
  • Match leads to contacts
  • Match leads to accounts

 

RingLead Dupe Dive Pros

 

  • Simple, but useful
  • Great functionality
  • Tool called “Unique Entry” that alerts users when they’re entering a lead that has the potential to have a duplicate (although it costs $)
  • Responsive team

 

RingLead Dupe Dive Cons

 

  • Some necessary features cost money
  • The long learning curve to the product
  • Doesn’t offer update automation, have to manually review and make decisions

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How Ascendix Search Can Help with Salesforce Data Management

 

If you want to use your CRM more efficiently, improve your data management, build targeted prospect lists, locate your properties on a map, track lease expirations, the Ascendix Search app for Salesforce.

Also, by using the Ascendix Search app, you can perform complex searching of data using filters and criteria that are not always available in standard Salesforce functionality, which is especially helpful if have to deal with huge volumes of information on a daily basis, save more time on winning more deals.

You can look for entities, for example, by relationship type, location, lease expiration date, availability of the lease in the submarket of “X”. Then, you can easily save the search lists for future use (e.g., call list, mass email list) and build multiple lists based on your criteria and use them to call your prospects.

This app can also serve as a perfect data-cleanup tool. If you need to update multiple records with a value (leads, contacts, accounts, opportunities, cases, and any other objects), you can use the mass edit feature.

For example, if you have TX and Texas in the field ‘State’ and want to make sure that all records have the same value, Ascendix Search list views will help you look for contacts with misspelled or wrong states and correct them.

 

How to Look for Contacts with Wrong States in Ascendix Search

How to Look for Contacts with the Wrong States in Ascendix Search

 

To check such contacts you can build a list with contact details:

 

Creating a List to Check Contacts with Wrong States

How to Create a List to Check Contacts with the Wrong States in Ascendix Search

 

Also, you can visualize and identify corrupted contact details that need to be unified with the help of charts in the Ascendix Search app and then correct them in bulk.

 

Using Ascendix Search Charts to Visualize Data and Identify Information that Should Be Unified

How to Use Ascendix Search Charts to Visualize Data and Identify Information that Should Be Unified

 

Here is how you can mass update fields in Ascendix Search:

 

Ascendix Search: Bulk Update of Incorrect Information

Ascendix Search: Bulk Update of Incorrect State

 

In addition to this, Ascendix Search enables adding multiple notes, scheduling multiple calls, events and sending mass emails easily. As a result, you get the data you need faster and become more efficient in your activities.

Salesforce Data Cleansing Best Practices

 

Keeping your CRM data clean is not only a technical activity. It also involves a creative mind, time, and intimate knowledge of the business nuances and customers to ensure complete data hygiene. And the first step towards Salesforce data hygiene is integrating the disparate databases into one repository.

Salesforce Data Cleansing Best Practices

Salesforce Data Cleansing Best Practices

 

#1 — Unified Database

 

The more disintegrated systems you have, the higher the chance that you waste time on the unnecessary lead and opportunity nurturing, that, probably have already been contacted by your team.

Also, such behavior can negatively reflect on your brand reputation.

How can I trust the company that can’t manage even its own database? Salesforce is a perfectly adjustable platform that can be integrated with almost any other system in the market via ready-to-install apps available on AppExchange, API, integrators like Zapier or Workauto, or custom code integration.

In greater detail about intricacies and approaches in system integration with Salesforce and top apps to integrate with your platform right now you may find in our Salesforce integration guide, or, if you have a specific question about solutions synching or how to integrate other CRM software with Salesforce, ask our Salesforce consultants directly.

 

 

#2 – Constant CRM Data Audits

 

You never know exactly how much bad data your CRM contains until you discover how much trouble it causes and how many missed opportunities poor data results in.

So, any organization that collects a considerable amount of customer data should conduct regular checkups to assess it.

And you can do it two ways: by using Salesforce data cleansing tools or, if you are totally new to the platform, seek help with Salesforce data clean-up services from consulting agencies.

Salesforce consulting firms like Ascendix will help you diagnose the gaps in the CRM system through which you get the most of inaccurate data, set up rules to enable data deduplication and formatting rules, advise on the best Salesforce data management tools, design your individual data cleansing project plan and educate your teams on how to perform data audit and cleanup.

And with Salesforce data cleansing tools you can spot records & fields with specific types of errors like improper formatting and missing data.

 

 

#3 – Salesforce Data Validation

 

Manual data entry from customer forms or by your teams almost always results in a high level of data errors. Especially, if you have large amounts of data input.

To ensure Salesforce data hygiene, the best thing you can do is to enable proper CRM data validation on forms that enter your database and proper formatting of emails, names, and phone numbers.

Moreover, it’s necessary to do overall data validation checks from time to time that hit your database. Because there are many sources through which bad data can leak into it besides manual input. For example, it can be imported, or integrated from a different system.

Or come through gated content like e-books and whitepapers. Make sure that you request only relevant information. If you have too many input fields, customers will just enter random data in order to access the content.

 

 

#4 — Right Salesforce Data Cleansing Tools

 

For datasets with a large volume of entries, having the right data cleansing products at your fingertips is a must.

Since it’s nearly impossible for your team members to run data cleanup on Excel for datasets that contain thousands or even millions of records. In addition to this, VLOOKUP queries won’t capture all data-related issues and there will always be gaps.

What’s more, we will assist you with the selection of the most versatile Salesforce duplicate management tool for bulk cleaning or solution for scheduling automated data cleansing on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

 

 

#5 — Internal Education

 

If you want to maintain your data clean and consistent, you should educate your team members on the importance of data quality standards and deploy Salesforce data cleansing best practices into your business operations.

To guarantee long-term Salesforce data integrity you need to take certain steps to decrease the amount of poor Salesforce data coming into your database and set higher data standards.

  • Analyze data quality to see and demonstrate to your teams how much bad data your organization is handling.
  • Include proper validation on all customer-facing and internal data capture forms
  • Review lead and opportunity management processes to unify standards for data entry for different systems used in a company. For instance, sales reps and marketing specialists use Salesforce differently and do not have common standards for data entry for lead and opportunity name or phone number formatting.
  • Educate your staff on data input standards and best practices.
  • Train your employees on how to use your Salesforce data cleansing tool.
  • Have a person who will regularly check data quality, data duplicates and will work with teams to fix errors and enrich your CRM data with useful info.
  • Keep the documentation accurate and up to date.

 

 

#6 – Regular Salesforce Data Refresh

 

Data like prospects’ phone numbers and email addresses become outdated very quickly: employees change their jobs, companies go through mergers and acquisitions, and contact information changes.

So, you end up sending out the wrong message to the wrong person, unless you constantly refresh that information. By improving the quality of your data, you’ll also get more accurate insights and gain a complete view of your customer. And to ensure the data quality, schedule recurring events to tackle data cleanup and enrichment.

 

 

Bottom Line: Why Salesforce Data Cleansing with Ascendix?

 

Data is the lifeblood of your business and so as to make more accurate business decisions, you need to work with structured data. This means accurate, consistent, and complete information.

Hygienic data give you more opportunities to achieve your sales & marketing goals, increase the accuracy of sales reports and forecasts, sales reps’ productivity, and shorter sales cycles. And your data cleansing activities should be performed both on the business and the technology sides.

 

Ascendix Technologies is a Salesforce consulting firm with 25 years of CRM consulting experience. With our services, you can accelerate your workforce productivity and eliminate the complexities of your Salesforce solution.

Our Salesforce consultants can enhance your relationships with your CRM data considering your core business values and delivering well-balanced services of high-end Salesforce technology and our industry expertise. Contact us and empower your staff with quality data right now!

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Review of Top 5 Free Salesforce Data Cleansing Tools [+ Salesforce Data Cleansing Best Practices] - Forcetalks

[…] And you can do it two ways: by using Salesforce data cleansing tools or, if you are totally new to the platform, seek help with Salesforce data clean-up services from consulting agencies. […]

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