Salesforce is frequently integrated with other systems and programs. While it’s a very powerful system in itself, it works even better when it’s combined with other systems to produce an all-round business-building strategy.
Salesforce helps smaller businesses to scale and larger businesses to stay on top of their sales and marketing workload. But it can’t do everything, and that’s where integration comes in. Salesforce integration can allow you to really make the most of Salesforce’s capacity.
Data integration simply means sharing data between systems. This is valuable because of it:
- This means you don’t have to rely on time-consuming, error-prone manual data sharing — Businesses that don’t integrate often end up sharing data via spreadsheets, which is a significant source of mistakes.
- This means different teams can work together easily — When everyone has access to the same data, they can spot the same problems and opportunities. This reduces friction and increases effectiveness.
Integration of any kind will usually save time and money and make your business easier to run. The great news is that there are a lot of tools, such as Rapidi, that can help you integrate with Salesforce.
Integrations within Salesforce
There are several simple integrations you can set up within Salesforce. These are integrations with popular applications such as G-Suite, Mailchimp and Slack. Some of them help you enable internal co-operation. A Slack integration, for example, will make it easier for your marketing and sales teams to share and discuss data in Salesforce.
Some of them can help you keep track of leads and customer information gathered outside Salesforce. A Mailchimp integration, for example, will allow you to easily share data gathered in Mailchimp with Salesforce. This kind of integration just makes sense – if Salesforce is your CRM, you should be linking it to anywhere you deal with leads and sales.
ERP integrations
Many businesses also set up integrations with other major business systems, especially an ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning system.
Where a CRM like Salesforce deals with customers and leads, an ERP deals with the systems that run the business. They include things like accounting and inventory. While the CRM helps grow the business, the ERP helps keep it ticking over.
This means that they’re natural partners. Indeed, many ERPs come with built-in CRM. However, most businesses prefer to use a more powerful and flexible Salesforce.
That’s where integration comes in. Integrating Salesforce with an ERP is essential if you want to make the most of the functionality of both and run your business smoothly. A Salesforce-ERP integration can help you:
- Avoid resource-intensive manual sharing of data. It’s inevitable that you’ll want your sales team to have access to data about inventory at some point, for example. An integration means they have it whenever they need it.
- Avoid costly mistakes. Manual data sharing brings with it a high risk of human error.
- Help teams work together better to plan the future of the business. When everyone can see the same data, everyone has the ability to make the same predictions.
How can you get a Salesforce-ERP integration?
As Salesforce is cloud-based, look for a cloud-based solution. There are plenty out there. These solutions make setting up a Salesforce integration simple and accessible for almost any business.
If you’re a growing business using Salesforce and you haven’t yet thought about integration, you should. It’ll save you time, money and quite possibly reputation.
