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Whether it's a relationship, a personal possession you don't use anymore, or a bad habit, letting go is never easy. For many Salesforce admins, “data” is on that list as well.
A Salesforce study found that in the average customer’s contact database, 20% of records are useless due to factors such as records needing updates or being duplicates. Despite this reality, many Admins hesitate to delete their data. Removing the wrong records can result in compliance breaches, potentially leading to fines. It can also negatively impact your users’ experience if they can’t find a record they’re looking for. No admin wants to be on the wrong end of those discussions.
That’s where archiving comes in. Archiving data has several benefits, including saving on storage costs, improving system performance, minimizing risk exposure, and remaining compliant (not to mention peace of mind). While all of these benefits should be enough to entice an admin to implement an archiving solution, many still hesitate to do so.
In this blog, we look at the top fears of implementing an archiving solution and how Own can help.
Fear #1: “I don’t want to lose access to my data”
The most common objection to archiving data is not being able to get it back. It's important to remember, though, that when you archive data, it's not being eliminated. It's just moving to a new location. Think of it like putting some older items you no longer need in the attic or the garage. You can still access it if needed; it's just not cluttering your main living area. Or, in the case of your Salesforce data, it’s not cluttering your production environment.
With Own Archive, our data archiving solution, it's even more accessible. Instead of your archived data being in the "attic," where you can't see it, Archive allows you to view archived records directly in Salesforce through the use of a front-end widget. This way, even though the data is removed from your production org, you can still view or unarchive records directly from Salesforce. With Archive, you can also easily restore records to production with parent and child relationships intact.
If, despite all of that, you are still worried about losing data, consider looking into a backup and recovery solution. A backup solution differs from an archiving solution and can act as a safety net should you suffer a data loss.
Fear #2: “It’s too hard to get started.”
Many admins tell us that even though they see the value of an archiving solution for Salesforce, they need a quick fix and are under pressure to free up storage quickly. And the fastest way to do that is to start deleting records.
Conversely, it can feel overwhelming to create custom archiving and data retention policies from scratch. Consider the typical steps needed to develop an archiving policy:
- Understand how much space objects are taking up in production
- Identify which of those objects are eligible to be relocated from the production org
- Build a policy to archive the records
- Determine how often the records should be archived (daily, weekly, or monthly).
Seeing the steps above, you can start empathizing with Admins who choose the quicker path of deleting data. But as we outlined above, there are compliance tradeoffs that come with those decisions.
That’s why Own Archive makes getting started easy. Archive's Storage Analyzer analyzes which objects are taking up the most space in your Salesforce org, guides you through building an archiving policy, and helps you visualize the policy's impact on your storage.
Fear #3: “I have too many orgs to deal with.”
Many enterprise customers, due to their scale and complexity, often have multiple Salesforce orgs to manage various business units, regions, or departments. When these companies consider implementing an archiving solution to optimize storage and performance, they may face concerns about maintaining these numerous orgs post-implementation. This includes ensuring data integrity, compliance with regulatory requirements, and overall organizational efficiency amidst the changes introduced by the archiving process.
With Own, our Archive Console allows you to understand your orgs from a birdseye view. Companies with multiple Salesforce organizations don't need to log in and out of every organization to understand the performance of their archiving policies. From the Console, they can quickly and easily click between orgs to view performance, activities, and overall status dashboard.
Remove the fear with Own Archive
With the right solution, archiving data doesn’t have to be intimidating. Own Archive allows you to safely and securely automate data archiving with customizable policies and defined retention periods while providing access to the data from the front-end system.
To learn more, visit our Archive page or request a demo below.
