Why should we care about exporting CRM data?
Let’s explore a real-life example of CRM data export, from a case back in 2019…
A fintech startup, based in Dublin, Ireland – with 15 employees and 0.5M turnover.
At the start, they were using a then-relevant CRM tool. However, after 3 years, they realised the tool wasn’t capable of supporting their future growth plans.
This is a very common situation for startups. The very beginning is more about adopting a CRM that’s ‘good enough’, especially if it costs nothing (or very little). Then, once the business has traction, it’s time to choose a more effective, efficient and often more expensive tool that can take the business that next step further.
So, which CRM did our fintech company originally choose? An American product, credited as one of the easiest CRMs to use (2012) – with an ultra-relevant USP of being optimised for Google integration. Most recently, they claimed it was “A tool your team will love”.
This startup did love it at first. But as time progressed, they reported a few complexities in achieving proper work using the tool.
The real problem we encountered only became clear when our team of CRM specialists performed the database export, working on the data outside the tool to prepare the dataset for import into the new CRM: Pipedrive.
However, the different tables exported weren’t related to each other. They may have been able to export contact persons with the organisation, but not tasks.
Nobody has been able to figure out how to reconnect tasks done with the contact persons or organisations included in the people table.
Worse, the people table had to be restructured completely, as organisations may get duplicated if added several times without control into Pipedrive.
In other projects, like exporting CRM data from Salesforce, our team needed to create the link between tables. But Salesforce, for instance, includes the ID for each record and each related record, whatever that is.
This should be the industry standard for CRM: export CRM data with ID and related record ID in every other possible table or database! Naturally, Salesforce does, but others may not – especially if you choose a cheap tool over a valuable one.
Pipedrive does it too: their export CRM data always connects (and reconnects) all records of every table, leads, people, organisations, deals, tasks, emails, and more. Crucially with this type of CRM, the knowledge of how to make it work best for you is the most important element.
By now, our fintech’s original CRM may have fixed the issue, (we couldn’t -and wouldn’t- check) but that doesn’t change the message: when choosing a tool for your business, saving money is great, but doing that to pay much more later is not.
