Salesforce Integration Best Practices: How to Avoid SaaS Silos

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Salesforce Integration Best Practices: How to Avoid SaaS Silos

Darren Cunningham, Informatica Cloud

Trey Roldan, Model Metrics

Kari Lessard , Staging Concepts

www.InformaticaCloud.com

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Today’s Agenda

• The Importance of Salesforce Integration

• Integration Best Practices: Model Metrics

• Integration Case Study: Staging Concepts

• Interactive Demonstration

• Next Steps

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How Many Systems Are You Integrating Today?

Nothing Yet… 1-3 Databases 1 ERP Multiple Systems/

MDM

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Integration Drives Salesforce Success

vs.

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Why Integrate?

Greater Adoption

More Business Value

Stronger Connection

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Typical Salesforce Integration Scenarios

Customer

Master

Product

Master

Order

History

Opportunity to

Order

• Other data management requirements include:

• Data replication, analytics/BI, data cleansing, etc.

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Primary Cloud Integration Use Cases:

Your Company

Migrate Sync Monitor Replicate Validate

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Informatica Cloud: True SaaS Integration Multitenant Cloud-based Service…

Your Company

2 1

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2

1

Your Company

3

Secure

Agent

Informatica Cloud: True SaaS Integration Multitenant Cloud-based Service…

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Financial Services

and Insurance

Informatica Cloud SMB and Enterprise Adoption

Tele-communications

Manufacturing

Media & Entertainment

Healthcare and Life Sciences

Business Services

High Technology

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Today’s Agenda




• Interactive Demonstration

• Next Steps

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About Model Metrics

• Trey Roldan

• Director of Technical Services at Model Metrics

• Leads Data & Integration Practice

• Model Metrics

• 100% Cloud Based Consulting Provider

• Premier Salesforce.com Consulting Partner

• Full Cloud Data & Integration Services

• Strong Emphasis on Mobile Enterprise Cloud Integration

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Salesforce.com Integration Best Practices

• Avoid custom coded

integrations

• Maintainability can be a challenge

• Monitoring & visibility are often an afterthought

• Lack of non-technical user empowerment

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• Incorporate Data Quality

into your integration

design • Leverage unique external IDs

where possible to reduce duplicates.

• Model your objects to accurately reflect the systems that reside outside of Force.com.

• Leverage required fields and validation rules to enforce external system constraints. Apply to existing data if needed.

• Use integrations as an opportunity to enrich existing data i.e. address validation, D&B lookups

duplicated

not integrated

incorrect

incomplete

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• Test, Test, Test

• Leverage Full Sandbox Environments where possible

• Test using production sized data volumes

• Test using both source and target data that reflect production

• Ideally establish a separate integration environment


Production UAT

(Full Sandbox)

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• Demand robust logging

and error notifications • If a job fails in a forest and nobody

hears it fail, did it really fail?

• Integrations should provide a consolidate source of summarized history, email alerts, along with actionable logs

• Identify a plan for who is notified and who resolves issues if jobs fail


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• Conduct a storage sizing analysis early • Target 3 years of available Data Storage to grow into

• Consider incorporating an archival strategy into your jobs

• Optimize Security, Profiles, page layouts. • Make integration critical fields read only for users

• Leverage integration specific user accounts for traceability

• Choose an integration platform that can scale

with your business • Support of SaaS platforms

• Real Time Capabilities

• Ability to support high volume transactions


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Today’s Agenda




• Next Steps

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• Kari Hayden Lessard

• Marketing Director

• About us:

• Leading portable performance staging company

• Located in Minneapolis, Minn.

Staging Concepts

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Like Most, Salesforce Started with a Trial

• No real CRM before Salesforce

• Business associate recommended

it and we signed up for a trial

• Model Metrics recommended by Salesforce

• Informatica free Data Loader used initially to help

integrate with custom ERP data

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Our Challenge

• For CRM to be useful, B2B sales reps had to be

able to log calls, track who they talked to as well

as quotes and proposals

• Needed to have our ERP talk to

Salesforce otherwise way too

much redundancy

• Generates orders, quotes, proposals

• Archaic ERP system

• Not ideal, but it’s what we have for now…

• Dual entry for sales team not an option…

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Our Solution

• Upgraded to Informatica Cloud Basic

• Due to data volumes and complexity

• Integration has been critical to

Salesforce adoption

• Managed by sales operations

• Currently doing nightly updates

• Next steps: considering ERP upgrade

• Archaic ERP system

• Generates orders, quotes, proposals

• Not ideal, but it’s what we have for now…

• As data volumes and complexity

grew, needed to move beyond free

Data Loader


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Recommendations

• Take time to plan

• Initial integration and migration can be a bit of process as you make the minor tweaks and changes to get everything “just right”

• Patience is key

• There will be more tweaks along the way

• Leverage the experts

• Model Metrics has been instrumental in our overall CRM success

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Demonstration: Trey Roldan, Model Metrics

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Today’s Agenda




• Next Steps

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Resources www.informaticacloud.com

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Resources www.modelmetrics.com www.twitter.com/modelmetricsinc

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Visit Us @ Dreamforce 2011

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model metrics

*Survey conducted by Dimensional Research

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Contacts

• Darren Cunningham, Informatica Cloud

• Trey Roldan, Model Metrics

• Kari Lessard , Staging Concepts

Twitter: @infacloud
