Best Practices For Salesforce Integration with Third Party Applications

When choosing the best CRM software, the first name that will come to your mind is Salesforce. This CRM tool covers more than 20 percent of the total market share of global CRM solutions. Most businesses have started using it to boost their performance and enhance customer interactions. Besides, they are also trying our Salesforce Integration with existing tools and systems to enjoy maximum benefits.

Integrating Salesforce into a third-party application can witness some additional features and functionalities. Some major examples of Salesforce Integration are LinkedIn, Dropbox, Google Cloud, WhatsApp, QuickBooks, and more.

However, you must ensure the process is error-free to enjoy the maximum benefits of the Salesforce Integration with your existing system. This article will help you understand everything about Salesforce Integration, along with the possible challenges, best practices, benefits, and more. So, let’s get started with this.

In simple words, Salesforce Integration is a process of combining the data and functionalities of Salesforce with your organization’s existing apps or system so that you can enjoy a unified experience. With this, you will get a centralized platform to manage different tasks. It can bring the important data of various systems, like supply chain, ERP, HR, SAP, ORACLE and more. As a result, you can monitor and control your business processes efficiently.

If you want to attain better consistency among different systems of your business, you can get it done through Salesforce Integration.

As per the latest study on Salesforce Integration, the users or customers of Salesforce have the below-mentioned expectation.

Also Read: The Key Benefits Of Salesforce Integration with Business Apps

One of the major reasons why most people opt for integration is to explore the additional capabilities and provide the end-users with a seamless user experience. Here are some best Salesforce Integration practices you can follow to eliminate all the major obstacles and make the process smooth.

Salesforce CRM software offers a comprehensive range of solutions and works perfectly with more than 4000 apps. Well, you don’t need to use every solution. That’s why you will have to understand your business requirements before proceeding with this process. Understand the current issues that you are dealing with, and then you can choose the solutions or apps that can help you attain your goals. By exploring your business requirements, you can avoid unwanted integrations

For better results, you should involve your team in the process of Salesforce Integration. After all, it is your team that will use the application. So, choose a team and inform them about the integration process. You can divide the team into two categories to make it a little easier for you.

Keep your team updated, and don’t forget to consider their feedback. There is no point in Salesforce Integration if the entire team is not satisfied with it. However, it is advisable to assign a single decision-maker with years of experience to make the final call.

Per experts, your competitors can keep you motivated to find innovative and new solutions. Analyze your competitor and understand the type of technologies they are using. The tools that work for them may also work for you. But you should rely on this as you may miss out on some important aspects of their infrastructure. Before you can begin the integration process, know about the apps integrated by your competitors. This way, you can bring more efficiency and accuracy to your Salesforce Integration process.

Once you have decided on the application you want to use, you need to analyze the application from scratch. Keep in mind that Salesforce Integration is not a one-day task. You will have to invest a lot of money as well as time, and the success of your business will also depend on that. So, properly check the product details.

Explore the product’s functionality and features. Understand the know-how of the application and how it can benefit your business. On the other hand, don’t forget to check the terms and conditions of the application to avoid any issues in the future. Most importantly, choose a product compatible with your organizational retirements that can increase your business value.

Better data security is the most crucial need of every business as they are shifting towards digital transformation. That’s why you should carefully scrutinize the third-party app you want to use to ensure your business data remains safe from unauthorized access.

Salesforce supports different types of integration, and every type has its challenges and benefits. So, before choosing one, you should examine the types and understand the possible impact on your organization. Some of the most widely used Salesforce Integration types are User Interface integration, Business logic integration and Data integration.

While business logic integration lets the business create high-performance business applications, with the help of data integration, you can witness seamless data synchronization between two or more systems. However, finalizing the right type of integration is not that simple. So, it will be better for you to get an expert’s help.

In general, there are three common categories of components of your existing apps or system that you can integrate with Salesforce. These are:

This is a complex component that greatly defines your business’s core. Such a form of integration will help you create all-around business solutions that will combine different back-end systems and apps.

If you must establish a perfect synchronization between data from different systems, then the data integration type will work well. With this, you will witness a real-time data-sharing experience.

You can opt for user interface integration if you want to provide your users or customers with a customized experience. With Salesforce, you can get the tools required to accomplish your business goals if the users utilize different applications in various languages.

While creating an integration application utilizing REST API or SOAP API is crucial to create the codes efficiently. APIs can deal with large record sets, so you should follow the right practices to ensure the efficiency of the code. If the codes are inefficient, it will lead to excessive APIs issues, which can lead to poor Salesforce limits and performance issues.

Extensive coding is required to make your integration process successful, and you may also need to install multiple apps. And to keep them running efficiently, you need to keep updating your software and infrastructure.

It has been seen that most businesses keep obsolete data. But this can affect the integration process. You should get rid of any obsolete data and clean up the system before you can begin with the integration. This way, you can avoid data duplication and free up more space.

During Salesforce Integration, it is crucial to fix the data quality and validation issues as soon as possible. Merging or rejecting duplicate data, mapping data fields, etc., are common problems that may develop during the process. So, ensure you have an effective data management strategy to deal with such issues.

Also Read: Acquire The Beneficial Terms For Your Business With Salesforce Integration

Salesforce supports various methods to integrate data into your existing business systems. Some crucial Salesforce Integration types that you can consider are:

With this type of integration, you can allow the data to be displayed in other systems immediately after completing the integration process. This is an effective and efficient integration type for aligning Salesforce sales and marketing tasks. Real-time integration has fewer challenges and is also adequate. Besides, most businesses opt for this when handling errors and managing queues effectively.

This method is generally utilised to lower the amount of data to keep large files in different applications faster and make it readily available 24×7. It can display Salesforce as well as externally hosted data. Furthermore, mashups support a small amount of data and short interactions. And this makes it an excellent choice for crafting highly customised UIs.

AppExchange is a popular Salesforce cloud marketplace with a huge selection of in-built apps, solutions and consultations. You will find different applications that can be easily installed within a Salesforce-supported environment. It supports an easy integration process and allows you to save money and time.

If you are searching for a perfect way to extract and then transform contacts, opportunities and accounts from your current CRM system to Salesforce or want to load your customer billing data from a remote system into a Salesforce system weekly, then you can opt for the batch data integration method. With this, you can import and disseminate a huge volume of data without hassle.

After successfully integrating Salesforce with the 3rd party apps you are using, you can enjoy the following benefits.

Apart from this, Salesforce Integration can also increase the chances of the business creating and securing better ROI. Collecting information from multiple channels, you can understand your customers’ requirements and create a robust customer network. Besides, it can also expedite marketing, sales, and other business operations that can lead to better accessibility to data, efficient data processing and more. So, give it a try now to witness the differences.

There is no doubt that Salesforce is one of the most popular CRM tools, and when used properly, it can help you improve your sales, productivity and marketing. On the other hand, integrating Salesforce with other 3rd party applications will allow your businesses to witness more benefits. Whether you have a small or large-scale business, if you want to enhance the efficiency and productivity of your company, then Salesforce Integration will be an excellent option for you.

However, the process of integrating Salesforce is a complex task. To make it error-free, it is advisable to take the help of a professional and Salesforce-certified integration partner. They can understand your business requirements and develop a perfect solution for your company. So, discuss your requirements with the experts to get it done now.

GetOnCRM Solutions is a global Salesforce silver consulting partner. With many years of experience, we help you in Salesforce integration to connect a wide assortment of platforms to your sales API.