This is a guest post by Skyvia.
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems contain a wealth of essential data vital to your business. Protecting this data is crucial to safeguard your company's valuable business assets and ensure data isn't lost due to unexpected system crashes or hardware failures. Other conditions that essentially require a CRM data backup include:
Corporate policy requirements.
ISO certification or an SOC II audit (a corporate backup and recovery policy is a must to get the green light).
Data loss issues due to factors such as bad coding, data migration, human factors, integration errors, malicious intents, and cloud app failure to name a few.
Types of backup strategies
There are generally two major tactics when it comes to regular CRM data backup:
Manual (semi-automated or not automated)
Advanced automated backup with a third-party vendor.
All modern CRMs allow users to export their data in various formats like CSV, Excel, Google Sheets, and PDF. A manual backup allows you to preserve your database and attached files in a local storage system. It is a valid backup method until you face one of its serious drawbacks.
Unreliability: The operating system of your PC or laptop can crash, and your hard disk or SSD can be damaged. This leads to the inability to restore your data in the future. If your computer equipment is stolen, your CRM data will get into someone else’s hands.
Lost relationships between tables: Most CRM platforms allow you to export its tables separately. You will have your deals, contacts, and other tables extracted, but restoring the tables with relations would become a real challenge.
Inability to see changes: It’s not an easy task to compare what was changed between two separate flat files, and it’s almost impossible to compare your stored file data with the records of your CRM table.
Inconvenient user experience with data restoration: Even though manual data extraction is relatively simple, data restoration can be tedious. You’ll have to map every single column of your flat file with the column in your CRM table every time you run the restoration. Moreover, you’ll have to restore the whole table even if you lost just a few records in the CRM.
The right backup strategy
Every company is interested in maintaining its level of operational efficiency. A cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery strategywould ensure that the data stored is well secured but accessible, under the right circumstances. While setting up your backup strategy, make sure you consider the following factors:
Backup and recovery plan: Firstly, make an audit of your CRM and corporate policy. Consider moving your CRM data to the cloud, as cloud data is more secure from physical damages like power outages.
Storage required: Launch an audit to find out how much data is in your CRM and check how many monthly records would be added.
Estimated cost: Compare the budget with all vendor offerings to ensure you choose a tool with the best price-to-quality ratio.
Support from the vendor: Choose the right vendor based on the level and frequency of support you would require. Сertain solutions include free support services, while others charge a fixed rate for every ticket.
End-to-end protection: Check if the backup solution comes with industry-leading security and if it aligns with your security policy.
Quick and simple implementation: Consider a solution that allows you to get up and running immediately, with no extra costs.
Test the selected vendor: Launch at least one test backup and one restore command. Simulate a data loss and restore the deleted record back to your CRM.
For an automated and stress-free data backup and restoration with enterprise-graded security, use Skyvia with Zoho CRM. Configure your Zoho CRM backup in just a couple of minutes, without any software installation, and restore data from your web browser.
Comments