It is important to evaluate the data you bring into InterAction to ensure that you have a plan for managing updates to the information. This plan should include the following:
- Whether the information can be edited directly in InterAction or if the information should be updated in an external system and brought into InterAction on a regular basis through Application Collaboration or Advanced Import.
- If information can be updated in InterAction, what Data Change Management rules should be applied to the changes users make.
- Which users are responsible for managing updates made to contacts and ensuring key contact collections are reviewed on an ongoing basis.
- Who should have access to the data.
For details, see the following sections:
Data Change Management Objectives
As described in the InterAction Fundamental Concepts guide, the Data Change Management feature lets you establish rules to control what changes to contacts in the firm list must be approved, reviewed, or automatically accepted. You can define different rules for different contact types. For example, you can define rules that require users to submit changes to information for your personnel, but for prospects, updates are automatically applied to the firm contact.
When determining your Data Change Management objectives, consider that every ticket created must be resolved by a data steward at your organization. If you decide to have more control over a collection of contacts, you must prepare to have more tickets for data stewards to resolve than if you allow changes to be automatically accepted.
While Data Change Management rules are most often applied to contact types, you can define Data Change Management for marketing lists as well. For example, if your organization has a marketing list with limited membership, you may choose to use Data Change Management to handle the contacts in the list.
Identifying Key Contact Collections
The first step in determining your objectives for Data Change Management is to identify your key contact collections. Your key contact collections are the collections that you determine are most important to your organization. Some contacts are more important to your organization than others. For example, changing the phone number of an important client affects your business more than when a user changes the phone number of a former employee of your organization. These collections should be more highly managed than your other collections of contacts. Examples of key contact collections include the following:
- Top Clients
- Our Personnel
Determining the Level of Management for Collections of Contacts
Data Change Management offers you the ability to customize the level at which each collection of contacts is managed. Out of the box, InterAction offers several management options. For each collection of contacts, you can further customize how changes are handled.
Levels of Data Change Management
| Level | Description |
|---|---|
| Externally Owned | Contacts that are brought into InterAction through Application Collaboration on a regular basis - If users attempt to make changes to contact information for these contacts in InterAction, the changes are overwritten the next time Application Collaboration brings in information. Instead, you want to know about the changes users are making so you can update the external system that is the source for this information. |
| Highly Managed | Very important contacts to which you don’t want users making changes without an explicit review and approval of the changes made - An example of this type of contact may be your top 100 clients. |
| Managed | Important contacts to which you don’t mind users making changes - You want to at least be made aware of these changes and given the chance to revert the information back to the previous value without too much effort. An example of this type of contact may be your alumni or prospective clients. |
| Partially Managed | Contacts that are not as critical to your business, so you don’t mind users making some changes - You want to be able to review suspect changes users make to contacts, such as entering a phone number with only four digits. An example of this type of contact may be Professional Organizations. |
| Unmanaged | Contacts with no categorization and are not critical to your business - You typically are not as concerned with managing changes made to these contacts. |
Determining Your Ongoing Rules for New Contacts
InterAction includes two features that determine what occurs when a user adds a new contact to InterAction.
- Smart Connect - For contacts that are brought in through synchronization with PIMs, Smart Connect can be used to simplify the process of determining which contacts to contribute to the firm list. Your organization can define rules to recommend contacts that should be contributed to the firm list, or even to automatically contribute contacts to the firm list without any user intervention.
- New Contact Rules - For all new contacts users create or add to the firm list, new contact rules are used to determine how the contact is handled, as well as the procedure for the data steward to follow up and review the new data. For example, you can specify where the contact is sourced, if Data Change Management tickets are created, and how new contacts are processed.
These two features work together when initially loading each user’s contact information into InterAction. Not only do these rules help ensure the contact information added to your organization’s contact list is of good quality, but they also help to reduce the burden on users to review a long list of contacts and determine which should be contributed. Additionally, these features help to get important contacts contributed to the firm list quickly.
For ongoing use, you may choose to modify the rules. For example, as you add additional important contact types, you may wish to add additional Smart Connect rules. More importantly, you should change the New Contact rules from their settings for a new user or data cleansing to rules designed for ongoing use of InterAction. For more information on using and configuring these rules, see the following section:
Data Steward Objectives
As you are determining which information is brought into InterAction and how that information is managed, it is critical for you to identify the users responsible for acting as the data stewards for the contact information over time.
The InterAction Fundamental Concepts guide contains a full description of the role of a data steward and the responsibilities given this role.
The data steward resources needed by your organization shift over time, as do the responsibilities assigned to data stewards. During your initial data load and cleansing, as well as the rollout process, data stewards focus on the following:
- Establishing data quality rules
- General data cleansing
- Merging duplicate contacts
- Supporting users
Over time, as the data in your system becomes more stable and fewer new contacts are being added to the system, data stewards can focus on the following:
- Managing changes to key contacts
- Maintaining data quality proactively
- Adding more information to contact profiles
Identifying Data Stewards
For each contact type or marketing list for which you use Data Change Management, you must define an owner. The owner can be a user or group of users that are responsible for acting as the data steward for the contacts of the specified type or the contacts contained in the specified folder. Any Data Change Management tickets created for the contacts are assigned to the owner.
The contact types provided out of the box with InterAction already have owners set. You may choose to add users to these groups or to create your own groups when assigning the role of data steward.
When identifying data stewards, consider the personnel at your organization who are already managing the contact information in other systems. In many cases, managing contact updates in InterAction streamlines a process users already go through. For example, instead of having to query professionals about changes to contacts on a marketing list, the data stewards are automatically notified through Data Change Management.
A good source of data stewards is the administrative staff who already manage the contact collections of individual professionals.
In some cases, users may determine that it is best to maintain the contact information in the external system. If this is the case, use Application Collaboration to update the InterAction contacts on a regular basis. In these situations, users can be notified of updates to contact information through Data Change Management tickets in InterAction, then use the information from the ticket to update the external system.
How Many Data Stewards Do I Need In My Environment?
The number of users who are responsible for the role of a data steward varies depending on all the following:
- How you have configured your environment to manage changes to contact information - You need more data stewards if changes are required to be submitted for approval through Data Change Management.
- The quality of your data - When you are first implementing InterAction, more time is spent cleaning contact data, profiling contacts, and working to improve the quality of the data than what is typically necessary on an ongoing basis.
- The number of contacts in InterAction - A database containing 200,000 contacts has more data quality issues to maintain than a database with only 20,000 contacts.
- The number of users managing contact information through the Web Client or their PIMs - Having 500 users actively managing contacts produces more Data Change Management tickets than having 50 users managing contacts.
Number of Data Stewards Needed for Initial Data Load
During the initial data load process, data stewards play a key role in getting the contact information ready for the initial deployment. In most organizations, the process usually requires one or two people managing the data cleansing efforts over three to six months or longer.
Note that larger organizations typically require more data stewards. For example, if you have more than 1,000 users, you may choose to leverage 10-12 temps to assist with the initial data cleansing. After the initial data cleansing has completed, you can reduce the number of data stewards to two-three people.
Typically, data stewards spend the first several months preparing contact information for bringing users onto the system. This includes merging duplicate contacts and preforming data cleansing tasks for all contacts. The next several months are typically spent managing Data Change Management tickets created as InterAction is rolled out to users as well as continuing to reviewing contact information for your organization’s most valuable contacts to ensure accuracy.
For more information, see Initial Data Load and Cleansing Process when Using InterAction to Clean Your Data.
Number of Data Stewards Needed for Ongoing Maintenance
On an ongoing basis, data stewards handle Data Change Management tickets and periodic ongoing maintenance to the quality of the InterAction data. In a typical environment, the following can be expected:
- Per 100 users, approximately five hours a week are spent resolving Data Change Management tickets
- For databases containing 50-70,000 contacts, approximately 25-30 hours are spent per week fulfilling the data steward role. For databases with 100,000 or more contacts, this number approaches 40 hours per week.