• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

Customer emails are dependent on a flow of high-quality data. But CRM systems are not delivering it, judging by a new study from Validity: The State of CRM Data Management in 2025. 

Of the companies surveyed, 76% say less than half of their CRM data is accurate and complete.  

In addition, 37% note that their firm loses revenue as a direct result of poor data quality. And for 25%, that amounts to at least 10% of annual revenue.  

Perhaps worse, 37% report that their staff fabricates data to appease decision-makers. 

Yet 90% agree that CRM data serves as the cornerstone of their company’s operations. And only 32% concede that their firm struggles with CRM data-quality issues. But those problems are serious:

• Incomplete data
• Missing data
• Incorrect data
• Duplicate records
• Unstandardized data

One contributing factor to data dysfunction may be that 46% of firms do not have a full-time employee devoted to ensuring CRM data quality. Indeed, 34% do not know who is responsible for it. But 18% plan to hire such a person in the next year. 

Another hurdle is data siloes. These, in turn, are driven by legacy systems that are difficult to integrate (50%) and incompatible tools that do not effectively communicate (44). 

In addition, only 20% of the firms represented have formal data-governance policies.  

Then there is the disconnect between company leaders and those who do the actual work. Among the leaders, 68% believe their teams have the data they need to close deals. 

Those employees don’t agree — they spend 13 hours per week running down data to fulfill requests. 

And while 84% of the big bosses say they change their decisions when confronted with countering data, only 19% of CRM teams say this regularly happens. 

Validity surveyed 602 CRM users and administrators in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.