A clean database is a powerful asset.

Maintaining a clean and accurate database is crucial for organisations to make informed decisions, effectively manage their operations and to drive growth.

Inaccurate or messy data can lead to miscommunications, inefficiencies, and even lost opportunities.

Whether you’re merging records, implementing something new or just looking to improve the quality of your data going forward, here are eight practical tips from ToucanTech to keep your data clean, usable and valuable.

Establish a company data policy

One of the most important ways to ensure your data is clean is to establish a data policy for your company, which outlines the processes for data entry, management, and maintenance. 

It should include guidelines on:

• Who is responsible for data management
• How data should be formatted
• The processes for regularly auditing and updating data

Consistency is key, and a well-documented and communicated policy ensures that everyone is on the same page.

Data validation is your friend

Data validation is a powerful tool to ensure the accuracy and integrity of your data. By setting rules and constraints on exactly what data can be entered into your database, you can prevent incorrect or incomplete data from ever being stored. 

For example, you can require that email addresses contain an "@" symbol and a domain name, or that phone numbers always follow a specific format. 

Some additional data validation tools available in Toucan Tech include:

• The ability to customise fields to indicate if values can be one or multiple per user value per user;
• The ability to standardise input values, such as a date of birth field which can only contain a date, and not something like "Was born sometime in the beginning of the academic year"

Implementing data validation checks will help to significantly reduce the number of errors in your database.

Make use of default fields 

Using default fields can help to standardize data entry and reduce errors. Default fields are predefined fields that provide a consistent format for entering specific types of information. 

For example, while you could store an address in the note section of a record, if you stored it in a dedicated address field there will be many more actions you could use it for, like sending an email to anyone living within a certain location. Your CRM might even have a feature that lets you plot default address fields onto a map, similar to the ToucanTech location filters module.

Use unique IDs

Every person in your database should have a unique ID reference to ensure data is accurately matched to the correct record. 

When adding new information, such as updated contact details, unique IDs will ensure that this is appended to the right record, especially important when importing automatically.

As an example, imagine that you're creating a list of alumni for your monthly newsletter. Without unique IDs, you cannot be certain if two entries for “Amber Short” or "David White" are for the same individuals or different people. This ambiguity can lead to confusion and even worse, if you leave it to a computer to decide you could update the wrong record and create inaccuracies in your database which are tricky to unpick.

Use picklists instead of free text

One common issue across databases is the variability in data entry by different team members or users. By enforcing the use of picklists, you ensure that information is added in a consistent format. This consistency is critical for running search filters and segmenting your audience.

For example, think about how two different administrators might go about storing the fact that one of their community members plays the guitar. information

One might input free text about the member’s interest in the guitar, while another might input that the member is interested in music.

Obviously, using a free text field here would lead to inconsistent data and the ability to meaningfully use that data would be diminished.

If instead they established one way of inputting this information and used a picklist with only specific options, the data becomes a lot more valuable. 

Merge duplicate records

Duplicate records can clutter your database and lead to inaccurate reporting. Regularly audit your database to identify and merge any duplicate records. Many database management systems have built-in tools to help with this process including ToucanTech, which helps you to search for duplicates and run a simple on-site merge ‘wizard’, retaining all the information you want in the new, combined record.

A few common areas where duplicates seep in and cause havoc are:

• Individual records: Typically due to having no (or poor) matching between your database and your online community.
• Org records:  This is typically where people enter acronyms, full spellings and abbreviations. You need to ensure that you either manually check your list regularly to merge and dedupe, or ideally, use built-in tools to help users find and match what they’re looking for when they enter it. ToucanTech has a built-in acronym and abbreviation builder for managing institution names, which learns every time a new version is added by a user.

Don’t embed records together

It might seem convenient to store related individuals, such as family members, in a single database record, but this can create significant challenges. Joint records make it difficult to determine which information pertains to which individual, and also prevents you from assigning unique IDs to each person.

For example, a joint record for a married couple could contain a mix of contact details and personal information, making it unclear which details belong to whom. 

Another reason this is important is to align with data protection rules. Individuals have the right to have personal data erased, and if records are embedded together this can become a very difficult task to manage.

Stay on top of your data management tasks

Regularly review and update your database to remove duplicates, correct errors, and ensure data consistency. Set a schedule for routine audits and make sure that all team members understand the importance of maintaining clean data.

Effective data management requires ongoing effort, but by following the tips above you’re well on your way to keeping your database accurate, reliable, and valuable. 

And the good news? It’s never too late to start following clean data practices!

Ready to take your data management to the next level? Our team are experts in helping organisations manage their data - book a product demo to see how we can help.