Salesforce is a fully managed, subscription-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software that works on Cloud technology. Salesforce provides a complete solution to organizations for issues related to Lead management, Invoice processing, Account Management, and Customer Service. Data in Salesforce can be presented in the form of reports and dashboards that help senior management track progress and make decisions based on them. This software is used primarily by companies to train their Sales Teams and provide them with all the tools and information they need to work more efficiently and close more deals.
Businesses deliver better results when there is efficiency and consistency in the tasks performed by the employees. An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system helps you in achieving that efficiency by allowing you to quickly access critical information about customers, suppliers, and business partners, and by improving customer and employee satisfaction, response times, and key bids. Moreover, by using the Salesforce ERP Integration, you can extend the capabilities of both tools. Due to this, all your business divisions, Sales, Customer Service, Executives, and Finance will have access to the same common information and it will ensure consistency across teams.
This article will introduce you to Salesforce and ERP systems and discuss their important features. Moreover, it will list down the methods that you can use to set up your Salesforce ERP Integration. The article will also dive into the use cases and benefits of integrating these 2 tools. Read along to learn more about this popular integration!
Introduction to Salesforce
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Salesforce is a leading Cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform that provides advanced Data Automation and Customer Management solutions for enterprises. This tool helps you track the progress of your Marketing Campaigns and provides tools to optimize your business strategy and lets you track and manage all information related to your customers on a single platform. Moreover, it has a Data Analysis module that can provide excellent insights into your customers. Plus, with collaboration tools, this module brings your entire team together and allows them to stay on the same page.
These attributes make it an all-in-one solution for your business’s Marketing and Sales aspects. With this tool, you can customize its integration features such as various data structures and user interfaces, as well as join forces for Marketing, Sales, and other teams to provide a holistic view of customer interactions.
Key Features of Salesforce
The following features play a major role in the popularity of Salesforce:
- Convenient Setup: Salesforce can be easily set up from scratch in just a few weeks unlike many CRMs in the market, which can typically take up to a year to install and fully deploy.
- Ease of Use: Salesforce’s user interface and workflow are simple and require absolutely no training to get started.
- Customizability: Companies can easily customize some in-built Salesforce features. Thus, businesses can modify this tool to suit their strategies.
- Invoice Planning: Salesforce provides you with enough Lead information for your Sales Team to develop optimal strategies for those Leads for individual targeting. This can make your customers feel more valuable as well as increase your success rate.
- Availability: Salesforce can be accessed from any remote location as it is a cloud-based software. So as long as you have an active Internet connection you can work with this tool easily. Plus, Salesforce has an attractive and robust mobile app.
Introduction to ERP
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Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a process that businesses use to manage and integrate critical parts of their work. Today various software tools are available in the market which helps organizations to implement the ERP process. An ERP software system’s major function is to integrate Planning, Inventory Purchasing, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, and more.
An ERP application can decrease your expenditure by integrating the different technologies used in various parts of your business. This will eliminate duplicate and incompatible technologies and you will save a lot of resources. ERP services have evolved over the years from traditional software models using physical client servers to cloud-based software that provides remote access over the Internet.
Key Features of ERP
The following features make ERP systems popular in today’s market:
- Common Data Definition: An ERP system provides a common database to your employees which ensures that every department in the company is using the same data definition.
- High Performance: The database can be split into 2 or more parts to get better performance outputs.
- Consistency: ERP software often uses a consistent user interface that maintains familiarity among its users. Also, this decreases the training costs and the software gets a professional outlook.
- Data Availability: ERP tools also make information sharing a convenient process across the company. It collects information regarding the tasks and progress of different teams and spreads this information to all divisions so that it can be easily accessed by anyone.
Methods to Setup the Salesforce ERP Integration
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The following 3 methods are most commonly used to set up the Salesforce ERP Integration for business:
- Using Salesforce Integration Tools: Salesforce offers various in-built integration tools called Connectors which can be used to directly connect your Salesforce account to other platforms like ERP systems. However, currently, Salesforce provides these tools only for a few popular ERP platforms like Oracle ERP, Microsoft Dynamic ERP, etc. If your company uses a lesser-known ERP software, then you will need to use the Salesforce APIs to manually set up your Salesforce ERP Integration.
- Manually Custom Coding your Integration: The option of manually setting up your Salesforce ERP Integration is appealing because of the desired control and customization it allows you over these tools. However, you must keep in mind that custom coding such integration will consume a lot of time, money, and resources especially since you will build it from scratch. Also, your manually set up integration won’t provide the extra functionalities like error handing which a 3rd party tool can offer.
- Data Integration Platforms: Due to the popularity of Salesforce and ERP software, many companies have developed tools that use in-built templates that can be used to set up various connections including the Salesforce ERP Integrations. These 3rd party tools provide seamless integration, automatic data sharing, and error control mechanism to the users. There are multiple such tools available in the market and each of them comes along with different features and prices. So if you want to avoid the tiresome task of building a manual Salesforce ERP Integration and have money to spare, using a 3rd party tool is your best option. This method will provide you a hassle-free experience and your Salesforce ERP Integration will be established smoothly.
Use Cases of Salesforce ERP Integration
Now, since you have learned the different ways of setting up the Salesforce ERP Integration, it’s time to understand exactly what data should you share between Salesforce and ERP to reap maximum benefits. The following use cases will help your business the most:
1) Sync your Customer Account and Sales Data
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A business stores its customer information in both Salesforce and ERP systems but with different perspectives. CRM like Salesforce will store the data related to your Leads and Sales while an ERP tool keeps hold of your customer’s billing information. Now, your Sales Team has to enter both of this information separately which is a time-consuming error-prone process.
Setting up the Salesforce ERP Integration for your account and contacts will allow you to first transfer the customer information from your ERP system to Salesforce and sync your Salesforce data with the ERP as well. This way, your Sales Team can have all the required data on a common platform and they won’t have to update it on 2 separate tools.
2) Sync your Quotations and Orders
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Accurate budgeting can be extremely challenging for companies with complex product configurations. The Salesforce ERP Integration enables your company to convert Salesforce quotations into orders, details of which are saved in an ERP. Moreover, this integration allows your Sales Team to monitor the prospects and their buying tendencies optimally. This way your Sales reps can tailor-make their E-Mail Campaigns and also notify the customers of new updates easily.
3) Sync your Product Details and Pricing
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Traditionally, your products and their prices are registered in your ERP system, but when it comes to Lead Conversion, your Sales Team requires access to this information to develop effective Sales pitches and provide accurate pricing to the customers. The Sales Team is dependent upon Salesforce for this information, thus they have to manually feed this data into the Salesforce platform and ERP separately. Also, your employees may simply forget to update information and mislead customers with incorrect prices or promises to quickly ship out-of-stock items.
The Salesforce ERP Integration of products and price lists can change this problematic scenario because every time you update the product list or change the price in the ERP, this information is automatically synchronized with the Salesforce product and price list.
Benefits of Salesforce ERP Integration
The Salesforce ERP Integration will enhance your company’s productivity and will provide your teams with the following benefits:
1) Easy Data Sharing
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A company has multiple teams and each of them is familiar with different software tools. The members of the Sales and Marketing Teams will be well equipped with Salesforce and the Strategy Development Team will know ERP tools better. Setting up the Salesforce ERP Integration will allow these separate teams to have access to the data collected by various software. This will streamline the data-sharing process among teams and will also enhance the work throughput. Moreover, this Salesforce ERP Integration will promote healthy communication between departments. Now neither team will feel like they are missing out on any important information since they have access to the combined data.
2) Greater Control and Detailed Insights
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In today’s competitive market, your company needs to convert its vast amount of data into actionable insights. A seamless data flow throughout the organization is required for this to happen. The Salesforce ERP System allows your employees to have access to all the data that flows in from various applications and channels. It also gives the company management a complete overview of the work. Since information from all integrated systems is common, employees receive more up-to-date and detailed information to help them make smart decisions faster and know what actions to take. Moreover, the top management has a clearer understanding of the company’s activities and thus maintains a stronger control over the progress of its various projects.
3) Enhanced Efficiency and Improved Customer Relationships
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The Salesforce ERP Integration will provide you with a complete overview of your customer’s journey. This data includes everything from a customer’s buying tendencies and preferences, order history, feedback, frequency of purchase, etc. When this information will be collectively available to your Sales Team, they will be better suited to create optimal strategies to enhance your client’s experience. This will enable your company to retain its clients for a long time.
Moreover, data will move rapidly among your company’s various divisions. So, even in case of emergencies none of your teams will have to search multiple systems for answers. Instead, they will easily have access to all the information they need easily. This arrangement will significantly increase the efficiency of your company’s work rate and will improve customer satisfaction.
4) Reduces Error and Redundancy in Data Entry
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The process of manual data entry is highly error-prone, and if the same data has to be entered by different teams, it creates data redundancy and increases the cost. The ERP Software Salesforce combination automates the data checks and balances across all systems to ensure that they have the same data. Also, since the Salesforce ERP Integration prevents data duplication, your data remains clean. Moreover, a major advantage of this integration is Task Automation. You can create simple point-and-click workflows, use business logic to move data, create processes, and automate data manipulation.
Conclusion
This article introduced you to Salesforce and ERP software tools and also explained their important features. It further discussed the various methods of setting up a Salesforce ERP Integration for your company and explained what are the benefits and use cases of pursuing this integration.
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As organizations strive to innovate and create customer experiences faster by using their customer data, the Salesforce ERP Integration opens up many opportunities. This integration will still need a lot of data to work upon and the process of transferring data from multiple sources manually will require a lot of your time and resources.
Hevo Data, on the other hand, offers a No-code Data Pipeline that can automate your data transfer process, hence allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business like Analytics, Customer Management, etc. This platform allows you to transfer data from 150+ sources like Salesforce for free to Cloud-based Data Warehouses like Snowflake, Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, etc. It will provide you a hassle-free experience and make your work life much easier.
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Abhinav Chola, a data science enthusiast, is dedicated to empowering data practitioners. After completing his Master’s degree in Computer Science from NITJ, he joined Hevo as a Research Analyst and works towards solving real-world challenges in data integration and infrastructure. His research skills and ability to explain complex technical concepts allow him to analyze complex data sets, identify trends, and translate his insights into clear and engaging articles.
