Overcoming 5 Biggest Salesforce Integration Challenges

Salesforce is a powerful tool that lets companies create a 360-degree view of their customers and business. Integration with other databases can further enhance the insights, offering a much higher value to Salesforce users. But integrating on-premise/cloud systems with Salesforce is not that simple and often comes with challenges that can disrupt workflow and productivity.

By aligning experienced Salesforce Integration Partners, you can minimize the risks and complexities involved in the process. Integration consultants use suitable integration patterns, methods, and tools depending on your business needs and future goals. They create a complete integration plan that focuses on optimizing system capabilities without significant downtime.

The integration process brings various challenges to Salesforce users, let's talk about a few of those and see how you can overcome them:

1. Defining the Project Scope

Scoping a Salesforce project is critical to its success. Unfortunately, many companies neglect this aspect in the initial phases of implementation which results in a below-par outcome. The problem can be solved by including all important stakeholders and finding answers to questions such as:

1. What applications to integrate with Salesforce?
2. Where will master data be stored—Salesforce or any other system?
3. How will you carry out data mapping and which integration pattern will you follow?
4. How will you sync data of on-premise systems that are least compatible with Salesforce?

While this is not a complete list, we hope it takes you in the right direction moving forward.

Don't forget to check out: Jira - Salesforce Integration: Why You Should Use a No-code Integration Platform?

2. Mapping Data Correctly

Mapping data between disparate systems is another concern for Salesforce users. Since different apps use different field types to store and represent data, the time for mapping is usually very high. Salesforce Integration Consultants can overcome this problem by using dynamic tools like Mulesoft. It allows you to map data elements in external applications with suitable field types in Salesforce. However, note that you may need to convert data to support relevant field types in Salesforce. 

3. Dealing With Duplicate Records

Redundant records are another issue that arises while merging or connecting databases. It leads to bad reporting, skewed metrics, and poor sender reputation. Imagine your sales and marketing teams using the same data on different systems. When you decide to integrate systems, you find two records of the same account. Outreaching customers repetitively from two separate accounts can bring a bad reputation to your company. Salesforce Integration Services providers use external ID (a custom field to identify unique identifiers) to indicate records imported into Salesforce — overcoming redundancy problems.

4. Validating Data Properly

The data you have post-migration may be incomplete, inconsistent, outdated, duplicated, or contain various spelling errors. It leads to confusion, waste of time, and cost along with internal and external mistrust. To validate data well and avoid such results, you need to set up the rules, formulas, filters, and flows. For instance, by using limit-based validation rules, you can prevent invalid data in one or more fields. A validation rule evaluates a formula based on certain criteria. Under this, records are only saved when a certain formula-based condition is met. Since most mistakes in data validation happen due to wrong data validation formulas, it would be wise to align trusted professionals who can write custom rules irrespective of data architecture. 

5. Selecting Right Apps on AppExchange

There are thousands of apps on AppExchange through which you can select desired integration solutions. However, before making a selection, do check if the app you plan to integrate is customizable or not. It is important because after you integrate a non-customizable app, you will likely have to compromise on its extensibility. To prevent possible mistakes in the selection, we advise businesses to integrate unmanaged packages since they can be customized, unlike managed packages. 

Check out another amazing blog by Alok here: Salesforce Integration — Methods, Types, Patterns, and More

Bottomline

Integrating Salesforce with on-premise/cloud systems allows you to centralize data, modernize infrastructure, overcome silos, and gain a better view of customer and business proceedings. When you plan to integrate any on-premise/cloud app, consider following correct procedures and avoid committing common mistakes. With strategic planning, the right tools, and reliable Salesforce Integration Partners, you can maximize CRM capabilities and mitigate various possible risks.