Five Dangerous Causes of Salesforce Data Loss

This article was posted by admin of Reflection Enterprise on September 25, 2018.

Five Dangerous Causes of Salesforce Data Loss

In our last article discussing the safety of the Salesforce data export feature, we determined that it is in fact safe to use. The ‘unsafe’ part of it is what you decide to do with that data afterwards. A similar concept is true when it comes to Salesforce data loss. Salesforce, by nature, is very safe. Your data is stored in the cloud and Salesforce has around a 99% uptime. It would be extremely rare for data loss to be the ‘fault’ of Salesforce (although it has happened).

But what about other types of data loss? Here we will discuss some of the top causes of Salesforce data loss. These typically involve data manipulation on the company’s end. Every time you connect 3rd party apps to Salesforce, you open up your Org to potential unwanted losses in data.  

Integration issues
Sometimes 3rd party apps or issues with an integration can edit the wrong records. If this happens with a few records, maybe it’s not a big deal. But what happens when it edits thousands, or millions, of Salesforce records? Without a backup and recovery strategy, the consequences of this can be catastrophic to the business.

Accidental deletion
Employees are human. Because of this, accidents happen! A record (or multiple records) can easily be accidentally deleted by users and employees. This is why proper training and having a trusted backup/recovery solution is so important.

Purposeful deletion
Jaded users and employees have the ability to cause a lot of damage to your Salesforce Org. A few clicks of the delete button can cause a multitude of records to be deleted from Salesforce! This isn’t difficult to do, and can cause a lot of damage if these records aren’t backed up.

Improper coding
Let’s face it. Developers can make mistakes too. A good developer will plan out their coding and test it multiple times to make sure everything is in working order. But even with these precautions, errors still happen. If the coding error is unknown, it can take anywhere from minutes to weeks to figure out the root cause and a proper fix.

Improper data mapping
When you import data, typically you will need to match up fields. If you’re updating thousands of records and match up incorrect fields – your records will now be wrong. A recent backup will make correcting these mistakes a breeze.

How to prevent Salesforce data loss
By maintaining a current backup of your Salesforce Org(s), you can virtually eliminate these mistakes from causing catastrophic damage to your organization. A backup is like insurance for your Salesforce Org, you may never need to use it, but if an issue arises, you’ll be thankful you did. Backing up daily (usually at the end of the day) is a typical best practice to ensure your records are the most recent versions.

Automated tools can make the backup process simple. By setting a backup schedule, you should rarely need to manually backup your data. This will allow you to have time for other tasks and you can rest worry-free.

Don’t wait for disaster to strike.
Sign up for a free 14-day trial of Reflection, our Salesforce backup, replication, and recovery solution. Discover how simple it is to protect your Salesforce data and keep it in your on-premise data warehouse