Cleaning data is a continuous effort

Keeping your data tidy and useful is an ongoing effort -- just like with any other collection.

For example:

My wife does a lot of costuming work at our local community theater.

For decades they had a large costume warehouse space.
With patience and experience, you could find almost anything you wanted there.

But it was a mess.

Volunteers came and went.
Nobody really kept it organized.

A couple of years ago they converted that space for another purpose,
threw out more than half of the costume pieces,
and moved the remainder into a new,
shiny,
smaller
costume closet.

The result was something that could be much easier to manage.

It's definitely easier to find things now.

But there's no guarantee.
A few more seasons will tell the tale.

Whether it remains neat and tidy,
or becomes another mess
-- albeit a smaller one --
depends entirely upon how they manage it.

Somebody needs to be in charge of ensuring:
things get put away properly,
new items get filed correctly,
damaged pieces get repaired or removed,
and resources aren't wasted acquiring duplicate pieces.

It's an ongoing effort.

Because systems don't organize themselves.

Sounds familiar?

Yep.

It's a lot like your CRM. :-)

All the best,
A.