tool for updating CRM data

[Jose]

Hi,

We have the following scenario: we have quite large CRM installation
and some parts of the data are not in very good shape. Especially the
account and contact data is something that needs cleaning. There are
duplicates, triples and perhaps even more of same accounts or
contacts. Also address information and other data for accounts and
contacts are not up to date.

We have selected a partner who have quite good account and contact
database and they offer service for cleaning the data. They are doing
it to excel sheet into which we need to export our CRM accounts and
contacts. They do not touch to the original data columns, they just
add their own columns to the excel and mark the duplicates and triples
which can be merged. But they do not offer any service for doing the
actual update of data back to the CRM.

Now, I am looking for tool for doing this. I do know that there is a
tool in codeplex:

http://mscrmbulkupdatetool.codeplex.com/
http://www.codeplex.com/wikipage?ProjectName=MSCRMimport

for updating CRM data which would work fine if this was just updates
of certain field values. But handling the duplicates and triples
becomes more problematic. Because we would need to programmatically
merge the duplicates and triples into one account or contact and the
rest would be disabled. This is because we need to have the sales data
linked to these duplicate and triple accounts and contacts to be
merged into the one account or contact which will be left in CRM as
active after this operation. The reason for doing this
programmatically is that the amount of accounts and contacts is very
high.

So I would like to know if anybody has had similar operations done to
their CRM and what would be the best tool available for doing this
type of operations. Our CRM installation is multi-tenant installation
so I am interested in tool which could be used for several different
CRM tenants within the one CRM installation using the same license of
this tool.

Thanks.

[AdamV]

Sounds like a big job.
I worked on something similar where we had a bespoke solution written to
do the job to our exact requirements, merging records across Leads,
Contacts and Accounts, moving all associated records such as activities
and notes to the remaining records as necessary (like a normal merge does).
All done in proper supported fashion via the SDK.

This might be your only route, and worth paying for if you have enough
data and substantial cleaning to do.

If you have a firm who can help you identify duplicates and choose the
best record to keep (eg the one with the correct address on), then I
suggest you pre-create custom attributes in CRM to hold the identifiers
they will add (flag fields for duplicates, or lookup fields to say this
record should be merged into that record). Then do your export with
these in place, use a dynamic Excel export so you get all the GUIDs too.
Once they do their data cleansing and add the relevant info, you can
then reimport and update just those fields.

This 'flagging' exercise might simply be a precursor to a bespoke bit of
code as above, but could substantially simplify that code by
spoon-feeding it the duplicates, rather than have it find them by some
set of rules / scoring system.

Hope this help, and good luck!
Adam Vero
firstname dot surname at meteorit.co.uk

Post by Jose
Hi,
We have the following scenario: we have quite large CRM installation
and some parts of the data are not in very good shape. Especially the
account and contact data is something that needs cleaning. There are
duplicates, triples and perhaps even more of same accounts or
contacts. Also address information and other data for accounts and
contacts are not up to date.
We have selected a partner who have quite good account and contact
database and they offer service for cleaning the data. They are doing
it to excel sheet into which we need to export our CRM accounts and
contacts. They do not touch to the original data columns, they just
add their own columns to the excel and mark the duplicates and triples
which can be merged. But they do not offer any service for doing the
actual update of data back to the CRM.
Now, I am looking for tool for doing this. I do know that there is a
http://mscrmbulkupdatetool.codeplex.com/
http://www.codeplex.com/wikipage?ProjectName=MSCRMimport
for updating CRM data which would work fine if this was just updates
of certain field values. But handling the duplicates and triples
becomes more problematic. Because we would need to programmatically
merge the duplicates and triples into one account or contact and the
rest would be disabled. This is because we need to have the sales data
linked to these duplicate and triple accounts and contacts to be
merged into the one account or contact which will be left in CRM as
active after this operation. The reason for doing this
programmatically is that the amount of accounts and contacts is very
high.
So I would like to know if anybody has had similar operations done to
their CRM and what would be the best tool available for doing this
type of operations. Our CRM installation is multi-tenant installation
so I am interested in tool which could be used for several different
CRM tenants within the one CRM installation using the same license of
this tool.
Thanks.