A GREAT CRM STARTS WITH GREAT DATA

Hi Mykola,

 Thank you for your comment.

Input restrictions on data fields can be very helpful to omit user errors, however, can create a negative impact on user acceptance on particular occasion. Let me give you one example:

I have just been in France for vacation and wanted to purchase a local prepaid sim card for my cell phone. The online order form included a field to be filled with my current (German) telephone number.

IMPOSSIBLE TO ENTER A GERMAN NUMBER resulting in “no purchase”. To include a field validation on the field “telephone” number makes it impossible for any tourist with a non-French number to make a purchase.

As to automated input on calculated values absolutely makes sense if the underlying rules are unambiguous and do not change too often.

Regarding intelligent notification about the necessity to verify the actuality of data: Yes, this falls under possible cleansing activities. However, as a first step users should be trained and constantly reminded that quality depends on their input and that other colleagues are relying on it. The cleansing activities might be needed in conditions where you have e.g. an inbound call center, where agents are urged to work fast (with a time limit per call) and where often data quality suffers. In those cases it is recommended to run regular cleansing efforts. They could of course be triggered automatically assigning records to a dedicated “data officer”.

The design of the user interface always depends on the individual use case and needs to represent a fair trade-off between too many restrictions of any kind that may frustrate users and – subsequently - their awareness for data correctness.

Under the bottom line: When a user interface and underlying logic are defined it needs to include human-centered design, incorporating human factors and ergonomic and technical reasoning with the objective of raising efficiency and effectiveness, improving human working conditions, and opposing possible unfavourable effects of use on user acceptance or performance.

Hi Mykola,

 Thank you for your comment.

Input restrictions on data fields can be very helpful to omit user errors, however, can create a negative impact on user acceptance on particular occasion. Let me give you one example:

I have just been in France for vacation and wanted to purchase a local prepaid sim card for my cell phone. The online order form included a field to be filled with my current (German) telephone number.

IMPOSSIBLE TO ENTER A GERMAN NUMBER resulting in “no purchase”. To include a field validation on the field “telephone” number makes it impossible for any tourist with a non-French number to make a purchase.

As to automated input on calculated values absolutely makes sense if the underlying rules are unambiguous and do not change too often.

Regarding intelligent notification about the necessity to verify the actuality of data: Yes, this falls under possible cleansing activities. However, as a first step users should be trained and constantly reminded that quality depends on their input and that other colleagues are relying on it. The cleansing activities might be needed in conditions where you have e.g. an inbound call center, where agents are urged to work fast (with a time limit per call) and where often data quality suffers. In those cases it is recommended to run regular cleansing efforts. They could of course be triggered automatically assigning records to a dedicated “data officer”.

The design of the user interface always depends on the individual use case and needs to represent a fair trade-off between too many restrictions of any kind that may frustrate users and – subsequently - their awareness for data correctness.

Under the bottom line: When a user interface and underlying logic are defined it needs to include human-centered design, incorporating human factors and ergonomic and technical reasoning with the objective of raising efficiency and effectiveness, improving human working conditions, and opposing possible unfavourable effects of use on user acceptance or performance.