How do you decipher what is true and what’s not? 

In our personal lives, we can watch the news on five different TV networks and see five different viewpoints about the same story. And in business, we can gather all of the insights from key people on a particular strategy. But what can you really trust when it comes down to big business decisions? 

You can’t run your firm on opinions or the idea that you “think” you know what is true. You have to know. And in order to know, you have to use data that is not only accurate but also comprehensive. You need the full, real picture.

But how do you accomplish that? The only way to know for sure that your data is clean and trustworthy is to build a single source of truth in your CRM. 

Here’s how to do that.

What is a Single Source of Truth?

Having a single source of truth (SST) means collecting data from disparate systems across your enterprise and aggregating it into a single solution. 

By creating a 360-degree view of your business, your SST will improve analytics and reporting by eliminating the need to bounce from system to system in order to gather all of the data you need to piece together the full picture. Plus, you cut down on manual entry errors, missing entries, or even possibly double-counting.

From an employee and client experience perspective, a SST provides a single access point to see all of the data they need in order to do daily tasks or view in order to track their accounts. Once you have all of your data in one place, you can do all or most of your work in one place. No more hunting.

Challenges of Creating a Single Source of Truth

Creating a SST will do wonders for your team, your clients, and your business overall. But setting one up comes with three main challenges that you will need to overcome:

Data Maintenance 

Your SST can’t be a SST if the data going into it is dirty. It’s hard to keep data clean, but you must do so in order to reap the benefits. This means doing an audit of all of the systems that will feed the SST and then committing to ongoing maintenance and testing. Again, you’re only as good as your data. And if you have bad data going into your SST, you will get bad data out.

Data Sources

This one is simple. The more systems you have in play, the more difficult setting up your SST will be. So you must have all of the connecting parts talking the same language. This means standardizing your data across apps so that you can compare apples to apples in the SST.

Integrations

Unfortunately, not all apps use the same APIs, which are the connections between systems, so they may not all send the same data in the same structure. This means a lot of initial work to set up the integration capabilities in order to get everything into one place.

How to Make Your CRM Your Single Source of Truth

The challenges of creating a single source of truth should inform but not deter you. You can create a single source of truth for your data and position your business to succeed. 

We’ve broken down the process into five steps:

  1. Pick your SST: While any system technically can be your single source of truth, the best option is your CRM. A top-of-the-line CRM, such as the ever-popular Salesforce or our SkienceONE CRM powered by the Salesforce platform, will have turnkey integrations to other critical business systems and provides arguably the best user interface and user experience to view and use data.
  2. Determine your records: Because you are connecting several systems that separately fill different needs for your business, you will have (what may seem like) endless combinations of data. So you will need to determine what your unified data record will look like and what properties in one system will need to match in your SST. 
  3. Make the connections: Once you know what you want mapping to where, document those processes and then create the connections to feed your data into your CRM from everywhere else. Skip the documentation process is not an option if you want to keep your data clean once your SST is up and running. 
  4. Establish oversight: In order to keep all of your new SST data engine moving and running smoothly, you need to assign (ideally) internal people to own the setup and ongoing data management. Establish clear rules about ownership and oversight so that your team knows who to turn to and who gets to make the tough calls.
  5. Keep it simple: An SST is no good if your people aren’t using it or using it correctly. Onboard and train employees in the established processes so that they view the SST as a go-to tool instead of a headache. And continue to build-in new processes to integrate other app capabilities into your CRM so your employees have even more of a single place to access what they need to work.

Need Help?

You aren’t alone in creating a Single Source of Truth. Whether utilizing Skience’s enhanced data consolidation and reconciliation (Data CaR) solution, or partnering with our Consulting team, wealth management firms can make better use of their data with a turnkey system of record to propel their digital transformation and drive growth.

Download our latest white paper to understand the full scope of how firms are succeeding with a unified approach to data management or book a demo with us today!