Cloudy’s guide to Salesforce Integration: Easy as 1-2-3!

What does it mean to integrate with Salesforce?

The end goal of integration is to have one source of truth for your most important data. Rather than having the details of your client interactions spread across multiple systems (Eventbrite, MailChimp, Shopify, Quickbooks, ADP…), you want to view, manage, and report on all aspects of your business from Salesforce.

Integration can occur in three basic ways. Let’s imagine you are using Eventbrite to manage events and attendees, and consider your integration options:

• Manual Integration: You may not think it counts, but when you type data from one system into another manually, you are “integrating” that data. For example, to track the people who registered for your Eventbrite event in Salesforce, you first create a Campaign record named after the event. To add each event attendee, you search to see if the contact already exists in Salesforce. If not, you create the contact. Finally, you add them to the “event” Campaign as a Campaign Member.
• Export/Import Integration: If you are holding events of any size or frequency, the manual integration model is untenable. Instead, you export your data from Eventbrite and import it into Salesforce. But note that the steps of your import process will mimic the manual process: First, you will import Campaigns. Then, you “upsert” contacts, using a matching criteria (such as last name + email) to find contacts who already exist in Salesforce, or create them if they are new. Finally, you create Campaign Members using the Salesforce IDs from the first two steps.
• Automated Integration: Although export/import integration is light-years faster than manual integration, it still is a time-consuming process, and it may not keep up with your business needs. Automated integrations keep your systems up-to-date without spending your valuable time. There are many possible tools to build an automated integration, but what Cloudy wishes to point out is that the ACTIONS taken by the automated tool will still follow the steps of manual or export/import integration as described above – ie. Create a Campaign, Search and Create or Update Contacts, and Create Campaign Members.

When you are considering the prospect of integrating with Salesforce, it often makes sense to take a Crawl-Walk-Run approach by moving through each of the above scenarios until your business requirements are met:

1. Crawl: First, establish what an integration would look like by manually entering the data from another system into Salesforce. You may discover that some customization is needed to properly contain the data, such as: custom fields, picklist values, record types, or objects/tabs.
2. Walk: Once you have established what the integrated data should look like, you can try an export/import strategy. If you find that an occasional export/import integration is manageable for your organization, you can stop there, and save the cost associated with implementing and maintaining an automated integration.
3. Run: If you have completed steps 1 & 2, you will find that you now have a good understanding of your requirements for an automated integration tool. Options for creating an automated integration run the gamut from hand-coded solutions, to app-specific solutions (such as the native Eventbrite connector), to a wide range of AppExchange tools. Selecting the right tool for the job will depend on the details and requirements of your integration.

Cloudy has recently discovered a single tool that provides a simple, yet powerful solution to a huge range of integration needs; Tune in next week to learn more about Workato – Cloudy’s latest Favorite App!

Meanwhile, if you would like to talk to a Salesforce certified consultant about your integration questions, Contact Us!

Read about a few of Cloudy’s other favorite apps:

• Apsona
• MORE from Apsona
• FormAssembly
• Conga Composer
• DupeCatcher
• Mass Edit + Mass Update + Mass Delete
• Rollup Helper
• SyncApps by Cazoomi