Customer information is important for every business. Organizations should have their CRM systems up-to-date. Nowadays, CRM maintenance is easier because of cloud technology. Organizations who depend on on- premise CRM system should also do periodic maintenance. CRM maintenance is important to achieve high levels of data quality and performance. This article by Peter Kowalke (journalist and editor), explores some CRM maintenance basics that every business should perform regularly. They are – Data Cleaning, Data Enrichment, Template and Workflow Review, Authentication and Automation Pruning, Security Review, and   Performance Tuning. Read more at:  http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/six-crm-maintenance-basics-71558

Big Data is massive. This article will explore the issues of big data: what it is, how it will improve decision - making, and how to use it correctly.

1) What's the big deal about big data?

Big data is all about three "V's" Velocity, Volume and Variety.

2) How it will improve decision?

# Deliver customer insights.

# Deliver targeted communication.

# optimize performance.

3) How to use it correctly?

# Collect data.

# Clean Data.

# Merge Datasets.

# Analyze Data.

To learn more about big data follow the article by Angela Hausman (PhD) at: http://www.business2community.com/big-data/big-data-like-teenage--01458960

Like everything else, businesses must also do yearly cleaning of their contents to remove redundant, obsolete and trivial data from their systems commonly known as ROT. This ROT makes it difficult to find data which are important and useful. A few tips to do this daunting tasks of data cleaning given by experts are: • Identification of relevant and critical data for the business from the identified repositories with the help of Subject Matter Experts (SME)

• Analyzing data in these repositories which are suspected to be important with the help of SMEs, automated processes and leveraging software.

• Establishing metadata for finding and retrieving documents, access control, privacy policies and potential business value

• Metadata needs to be classified for all documents in the repository. This classification process reveals the ROT.

These essential chores can lead to cost-effective information governance by eliminating ROT.

Read more at: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/information-management/do-your-chores-clean-out-your-data-029232.php