What it is:

Salesforce is widely regarded as a groundbreaking information platform which has helped revolutionise the business industry. As the World’s #1 CRM platform, Salesforce unifies all individual departments of an organisation into one integrated platform that powers the entire suite of connected apps.

The integration of Salesforce with relevant tools allows you to transfer necessary data collected from Salesforce into other systems which you then use for a streamlined process.

Why is it important / Business Value:

By integrating Salesforce with other applications, you can achieve seamless data transition to complement and improve existing systems and enhance operational visibility. This provides your organisation unified access to customers’ information, allowing you to resolve issues efficiently, identify customer needs and make data driven decisions to ensure that actions happen exactly when you need them to happen, i.e., billing at the right time.

Integration is essential for organisations to prosper as not only does the streamlined platform enhance process efficiency, but the multiple system collaboration and automation helps boost productivity.

Where appropriate:

The integration of Salesforce with connected systems is used across a wide range of departments; Accounting/Finance, Inventory Management, Payment Solutions, ERP and more. To better understand how these systems collaborate, let’s take a look at some examples.

Accounting/Finance

Rather than inputting multiple entries into various systems, the connection of accounting systems with Salesforce provides a holistic view of data to form a complete CRM accounting solution.

The benefits:

• Automatically calculate payments to invoices based on the amounts/document reference.
• Generate invoices from Salesforce opportunities with one simple click.
• Set the relevant global and customer account credit terms.
• Improve efficiency and data accuracy by eliminating duplicate entries in the finance and sales departments.

Inventory Management

By connecting Salesforce to your inventory management, you can simultaneously sync orders, products and purchase orders and gain a holistic view of process activity to help warehousing and stock management.

The benefits:

• Track the transfer of goods between your warehouse and other storage facilities.
• Keep track of all stock to prevent deficiency. 
• Creates product items to accurately track where items are being stored.
• Create product requests when stock is low and connect the request with associated orders.

Payment Solutions

Processing payments is another key area where the integration of Salesforce thrives. The centralised approach to receiving payments via this cyber gateway allows you to accept all major credit cards which are likely to be used and subsequently stores all of these transactions in the CRM database.

The benefits: 

• Receive payments faster as the funnel system directs all transfers to a centralised platform. 
• Increase payment security as the removal of a third party intermediary reduces the exposure of sensitive information. 
• Increase data accuracy and efficiency through automated processing.
• Obtain valuable customer insights by monitoring purchase history, scheduled orders, refunds, and declined payments. 

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Integrating ERP with Salesforce can provide substantial value to your business, from forecasting and revenue pull to end-to-end visibility and monitoring of campaign success, it offers a communal platform for ERP solutions.

The benefits:

• Increased data accuracy as the joining of numerous data storing systems decreases the likelihood of inconsistent data profiles.
• Allows your sales, customer service and account teams to make smart, more informed decisions with accurate, centralised data.
• Exact, up-to-date product and price books as integration removes the need for manual updating which can cause inaccuracies. 
• Accurate, efficient quoting system for complex product configurations to turn proposals into sales. 

Considerations of application:

The decision on which integration tool to use is dependent on the number of systems to integrate and their specifics and the amount of levels to cover for this integration. 

The different ‘levels’ to be considered can be broken into four categories;

• Data integration

This solution uses APIs (SOAP or REST) to transfer data across systems instantly to improve data consistency and enhance team efficiency.

• Process Integration 

This merges apps and systems at the workflow level of operations to integrate end-to-end business processes.

• Security Integration 

This seamlessly connects validation methods to help reduce administration and improve the user experience. 

• User Interface (UI) Integration

This amalgamates the UIs of multiple systems to funnel a single entry point into relevant applications for an enhanced customer journey. 

Integration Solutions 

Depending on the levels of integration required for your business, you may already have an idea on your preferred method of carrying this out. For simple apps with straight forward integration points, you may focus on managing external data through the CRM UI with Salesforce frameworks.

But, we understand that complex integration projects require unique solutions. Projects that involve several apps and many integration points need a tailored approach to effectively merge the platform with existing information. A custom integration solution is just as reliable, effective and maintainable as native Salesforce apps with the added benefit of a robust solution to exactly suit your needs. CRM consultants will carry out all the necessary tweaks to combine your Salesforce platform with third-party systems to merge them at both process and data levels for an improved customer experience. 

Our team of professional Salesforce consultants have extensive experience in leveraging different Salesforce products with systems in different areas such as;

• Accounting and finance (Sage, Xero, QuickBooks, etc.)
• ERP and inventory management (Dynamics, Epicor, SAP, etc.)
• Payment solutions (Stripe, SagePay, WorldPay, Asperato, PayPal, GoCardless, etc.)
• Marketing (HubSpot, Eloqua, Mailchimp, etc.)
• Operations (Azure Web App for hosting and Docusign for e-signatures, etc.)

Our tailored, robust solutions are designed to meet predefined goals defined by our customers to offer the best in class projects to help you achieve your business objectives. As a Gold Level Salesforce partner, you can rest assured that Ignyto has you covered. Get in touch today to find out how we can help you maximise business profits.