Data Retention in Salesforce: Best Practices & Tools

Описание: What is your strategy around data retention in Salesforce? Is it as defined as you would like it to be? Data retention is a branch of data governance and serves as a proactive approach to data management. It defines how long we store data in Salesforce. It also analyzes the lifecycle of data, from creation and import to archiving or deletion. When we fail to develop effective policies for data retention, we open our organization to risks -- legal, security, and performance problems.

Why Data Retention is Important
When we collect customer data, we have a legal and ethical duty to protect that data and use it responsibly. Regulations like GDPR and HIPAA require organizations to delete personal data after a certain period or once it is no longer needed. Failing to do so can invite sizable fines and legal actions.

When we create data retention policies, it should be a collaborative exercise including IT, business stakeholders, legal, and compliance. Bringing these different voices to the table ensures we are viewing data retention holistically to meet the organization’s needs. It also helps us achieve buy-in from these critical stakeholders.

Also, if we are hoarding data unnecessarily, we are being highly inefficient in our data management. We are accruing additional storage costs and impacting performance as our data retrieval slows. We also introduce security concerns like data breaches. There is a balance of course. If we dump data prematurely, we can lose critical data necessary to report on the state of the business.

Understand Your Data
It’s hard to build an effective data retention policy without first understanding your data. Who is using it? How is data coming into Salesforce? What are the business use cases for your data? What data is sensitive and necessary for legal compliance? We need to build a 360-degree view of our data so we can back into what data should be archived and when. Creating these data classifications should not be a one-time event. We should regularly revisit them to ensure they evolve with the landscape of our business. We should also be transparent in sharing them with key business stakeholders.

Implement Data Removal
Salesforce has a lot of great features that help us automate our data retention efforts. Data Archiving allows us to move data to a location outside of your main Salesforce instance. The data is still retained for historical and regulatory purposes, but it separates it from the actively used data. To help with our auditing efforts, we can enable Field History Tracking. This allows us to view what field level changes were made, when, and by whom. There are also Event Monitoring and Audit Trail that allow us to track user activity from login to data modification. When researching a security incident or faced with a need to demonstrate regulatory compliance, that level of audit detail is invaluable. Salesforce also comes with built-in Data Retention Policies where you can define how long certain types of data should be kept in your Salesforce instance.

The built-in tools are fantastic, but with great power comes great responsibility. I can not stress enough the importance of thoroughly testing changes in your sandbox environment before elevating them to production. Also, ensure you are doing regular data backups to give you that safety net when those inevitable unknowns crop up.

Documentation & Training
A data retention policy does us little good if it’s not properly documented. Your data retention policy should serve as an evergreen document. It is constantly evolving to address new legal and regulatory requirements as well as reflect the changing needs of the business. We need to chronicle the rationale behind policy changes so we can demonstrate proper compliance. Proper documentation also gives us an invaluable tool to train our end users. Teaching them the importance of data retention and the defined policy supporting it defines their responsibilities.

Audit & Review
Lastly, we need to make sure the policies we’ve defined are being practiced. Don’t simply assume the built-in Salesforce tools are doing their job. Perform the necessary checks that validate your data retention efforts.

This video is brought to you by Improving. We are an IT consulting firm serving North America. If you need help with data governance strategies, we’d love to have a conversation. Our elite team of Salesforce consultants can help you navigate this space and allow you to get the most out of your Salesforce instance. Please reach out to us at https://improving.com. We look forward to talking with you.

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