Why CRM Data Quality Matters More Than Dashboard Design
Establish consistent identities, lead stages and data ownership before building commercial reporting dashboards.
Find the decision the report must support
Before we discuss charts, we ask what someone should do after reading the report. If a manager wants to reassign unattended leads, they need to see who owns each lead and when someone last acted on it. A missing owner needs attention; a missing activity date needs investigation. Combining both into a single “inactive” category hides that difference.
List the fields the decision requires, then identify who creates or updates each one. Agree what counts as an action: receiving a new enquiry and a salesperson following up tell the manager different things. Keep unknown values visible so the team can fix the records without mistaking missing information for a lack of sales activity.
Treat duplicates as a review problem
The same person may enquire about two separate services, and a shared company address may represent several people. Normalised email can suggest a match, but it is insufficient authority for an automatic merge. Keep the original submissions available and let a reviewer confirm how the records relate before merging them.
For example, one person might submit a website enquiry on Monday and a CRM enquiry on Thursday. That gives you two enquiries from one contact. Whether those become one opportunity or two depends on how your team handles the work. A report labelled “new customers” should not simply count both form submissions. Separate enquiries, contacts and opportunities, and make the counting rule clear beside the report.
Audit definitions before visual design
Take a sample of records from each stage and trace them from the CRM to the report. Can someone explain why each record appears in that stage and reporting period? Check timezones, reopened records and missing dates. If a report excludes a record, make the reason available to the people using it.
Agree how a reopened opportunity should appear: in a view of current work, a view of newly created opportunities, or both. Those views answer different questions. Once the team can explain the counts, choose the few views that help them act. Repeat the check when stages or working practices change; an unchanged chart can still tell a different story after a workflow change.
Apply this to your brief
Bring your current workflow, a representative record and the decision you need to make. Include an awkward example too, such as a repeated enquiry or a reopened opportunity. We can use those examples to work through which fields, definitions and review steps the report needs before discussing its visual design. Explore Willan’s consulting approach, review development services or discuss your project.
Planning guidance from Webvelopment Editorial. Confirm platform requirements and project assumptions before committing budget.
Keep the right things connected.
Technology and Digital Strategy Consulting
Work through technology decisions with Willan Theunissen: discovery, architecture reviews, marketing technology and digital capability planning.
Bespoke Development
Plan business software around the work people need to do: choose an application, eCommerce change, PHP update or integration, with a clear first release.
Digital Project Discovery & Technical Scoping Estimator
Offer paid discovery when requirements are too uncertain for fixed build pricing.
Start a conversation
Tell us what you are working towards. We’ll help you find a practical next step.