1. Data sync
2. Data cleanup
3. Data migration
4. Data backup and replication
Data sync
Bring data from a variety of sources into Zoho CRM
Your CRM data can be gathered through various sources such as purchasing a record database, collecting from trade shows, joint marketing ventures, and campaigns, among others. The data sources could be Excel or CSV files, databases, campaign tools, marketing tools, and more. Let us look at how DataPrep can help you clean and transit data to your Zoho CRM account.
External data sources → Zoho DataPrep → Zoho CRM
- Collect your data from 50+ data sources with Zoho DataPrep.
- Model, clean, transform, and enrich your data using 250+ transformations, based on your needs.
- Export prepared data as files and import them to your Zoho CRM account.
Importing records from external sources to Zoho CRM is one of the most important lead creation activities in any business. Importing clean data is paramount for that reason. Zoho DataPrep helps ensure you import only high quality data into Zoho CRM. This way you can keep your customer data in sync, and make processing new entries and historical data easier using DataPrep.
Data cleanup
Use DataPrep to clean your CRM data
Maintaining high data integrity is essential for any organization. One of the biggest threats to data integrity is having duplicate records in your data. Often, duplicate contacts are caused by human error. For example, one team member might spell a contact's name wrong, causing it to be added twice. It can also be caused by a contact filling in a form with a different email address or phone number.
Nevertheless, you need your data to be reliable, accurate, and complete. Zoho DataPrep lets you maintain clean data without any duplicate records in your Zoho CRM account. You can use Zoho DataPrep to connect, cleanse, prepare, model, transform, and enrich your data in Zoho CRM using the steps below.

Zoho CRM → Zoho DataPrep → Zoho CRM
- Connect to your sales data with Zoho DataPrep at module level using Zoho CRM connector.
- Clean, prepare, model, transform, and enrich your CRM data.
- Export prepared data as files and manually import them to your Zoho CRM account.
You can export the prepared data from Zoho DataPrep as files and import to your existing Zoho CRM modules. Otherwise, you can create a new one and import your data into the respective modules. You can also switch modules or export your prepared data to another module while importing data into Zoho CRM.
During the data preparation process, you can merge and blend your data from different sources using the
join and union (append) transformations. This cross-data source blending adds wider meaning to your data and sets the context which helps in deriving business insights unavailable before.
Data migration
You can use Zoho DataPrep for data migration in two ways.
1. CRM solutions → Data destinations
You can use Zoho DataPrep to migrate your data between CRM platforms from one CRM platform to another, or to a data destination.
- Connect to your sales data with Zoho DataPrep. Import data as files from other CRM solutions into DataPrep.
- Clean, prepare, model, transform, and enrich your CRM data.
- Export prepared data as files to other CRM solutions, or to 30+ data destinations from DataPrep.
You can use Zoho DataPrep to migrate data from other CRM systems, prepare it and push to Zoho CRM.
- Connect to your sales data with Zoho DataPrep. Import data as files from other CRM solutions into DataPrep.
- Clean, prepare, model, transform, and enrich your CRM data.
- Export prepared data as files and push them back to your existing Zoho CRM modules or create a new one.
You can export the prepared data as files to your existing Zoho CRM modules, or create a new one and import your data into the respective modules in your Zoho CRM account. You can also switch modules or export your prepared data to another module while importing data into Zoho CRM.
Data back up and replication
Data replication and backup allows you to maintain a copy of your CRM data that may be useful for reference and fault tolerance.
Data replication involves storing the same data in multiple locations to improve data availability and accessibility. Having a replica can also make data access faster, especially in organizations with many locations and balance the network load.
Replicated data can also improve and optimize server performance. For example, by directing all read operations to a replica, administrators can save processing cycles on the primary server for more resource-intensive write operations.
Similarly, in the case of data analytics, data-driven organizations replicate data from multiple sources to data destinations, where they use them to enhance BI and Analytics tools.
Using
DataPrep's Zoho CRM connector, you can back up your Zoho CRM data or perform data replication, as and when needed. For example, you can choose to backup or create a replica of your data by scheduling data import before CRM data import or mass update operations. You can set it up once and need not worry about data losses.
Zoho CRM → Data destinations
- Connect to your sales data with Zoho DataPrep at module level using Zoho CRM connector.
- Configure import to backup data since a previous date. You can import your CRM data starting from last month or from the beginning. You can also choose to import data within a date range using the custom option.
- Export prepared data to 30+ data destinations from Zoho DataPrep including BI and Analytics platforms.
- Set and forget: set up schedules using the connectors to auto-sync your CRM data to your data warehouses.
Replicating data from a variety of sources at different times may result in some datasets being out of sync with others. This may propagate inconsistent data across datasets. DataPrep helps you ensure that all replicas are updated consistently and maintain data lineage. You can create and set up
ruleset templates to auto-clean, prepare, and transform your CRM data before storage. You can also model, transform, and enrich your data for downstream analysis.