Salesforce ServiceNow Integration Guide

Table of contents:

• About Salesforce
• About ServiceNow
• Why integrate them?
• Common Salesforce ServiceNow integration use cases 
• How to choose the best integration tool? 
• How to choose the best integration tool? 
• Conclusion

Customer Relationship Management systems play a key role in maintaining high levels of end-user satisfaction. They help businesses manage the entire client journey. Helpdesk platforms are also an important segment of the IT infrastructure of every modern organization. Their functionalities enable responsible teams and departments to keep track of client-related issues, prevent escalations and automate vital tasks.  

Salesforce and ServiceNow are the most popular names in those two categories. Easy to handle and equipped with a list of useful features, the two systems can be found embedded in the IT ecosystem of almost every enterprise. If connected, the systems' capabilities expand, and their users gain detailed insights and data. 

About Salesforce

Salesforce is a leading cloud-based CRM platform. Its comprehensive features enable organizations to automate important business operations such as customer relations, marketing, and analytics. The CRM platform helps the organizations' business units get a better overview and build action plans when it comes to handling important company services.   

Additionally, the platform enables the timely resolution of crucial customer issues and understanding of customer-related data.  

What makes Salesforce so popular is the fact that companies rely on its functionalities to cope with time management, access accumulated customer-related data from any point and time, enhance the collaborations between the departments, and more.  

About ServiceNow

ServiceNow is one of the hottest service desk applications available on the market today. ServiceNow acts both as a SaaS and PaaS tool - depending on its users' needs. The system helps users easily handle the processes of incident management and automation. 

ServiceNow also makes it easier for teams to build and manage the organization's complex workflows and even to configure customized reports based on the accumulated data. 

Due to its multi-instance architecture, ServiceNow gives its users greater flexibility and control with zero impact on other users. Another important benefit of ServiceNow is the fact that it consists of a list of modules such as IT Service Desk, HR Service Desk Delivery, Configuration Management Database (CMDB), Change Management, and more. Each module gives users the capability to modify the platform following the enterprises' internal needs. 

Don't forget to check out: Salesforce Forms Integration Without Code

Why integrate them?

CRM and service desk systems help companies easily organize their work, keep track of various activities and handle customer-related issues timely. That is why many enterprises rely heavily on such tools and use them daily. So, it's no wonder that Salesforce and ServiceNow can be found embedded in almost every company. Most of the time, the company's departments use those systems separately - with one unit using Salesforce and another utilizing ServiceNow. This would imply that both systems are not connected in any way.   

As a result, valuable information transfer often happens manually. This not only takes a lot of time and resources, but it can also lead to errors and misunderstandings between the company's departments. 

Connecting the two systems eliminates all those issues. What's even more, it automates and speeds up the data transfer between them. Integrating Salesforce and ServiceNow significantly improves the teams' overall productivity and helps achieve important business goals.  

Common Salesforce ServiceNow integration use cases

Businesses are often seeking to integrate Salesforce and ServiceNow to speed up issue resolutions and improve cross-team collaboration. The most common scenario is transferring Salesforce Cases to ServiceNow.  

To get a better understanding of how it happens, let's assume your sales team uses Salesforce as a CRM system and your service desk team uses ServiceNow.  

 There is a new case in Salesforce. The integration tool must detect it and collect it. Preferably, this will happen automatically. Then, the tool must transfer the collected information to ServiceNow, where it should create a related Incident/Change.  It's best if the tool offers customization and flexibility so that the user can tailor it to transfer specific types of data in accordance with the use case. Control over data filtering is also crucial so it is good if the integration platform offers it as a feature.  

Experience shows that in order to get the maximum of an integration process between two systems (especially, as complex as Salesforce and ServiceNow), their connection must be bi-directional. So, whenever a change is made in one of the systems, it will immediately be present in the other. With a bi-directional connection between Salesforce and ServiceNow, important changes in the data (comments or attachments, for example) in one of them instantly become present in the other - automatically.  

The synchronization of the information on both sides of the connection is also important. That's why the right integration tool should possess this quality. 

How to choose the best integration tool?

Using a reliable and flexible tool to link the two is key. Marketplaces offer plenty of options to choose from. However, not all of them are scalable and allow customizations that fit complex use cases and needs. Most integration solutions require a decent amount of time and some degree of coding knowledge.  

Also, consider if you need the integration to be bi-directional and automatically make updates in both – Salesforce and ServiceNow. This is important for the high availability and transparency in the systems. 

But what are the exact characteristics that an integration platform must possess to make the connection between systems like Salesforce and ServiceNow happen with the best possible results? Various tech researchers state the following features: 

The tool must have the capacity to support complex integrations (plus mapping of specific fields) 

• Should be easy to use even for non-technical employees 
• Must offer a prominent level of security  
• Its  learning curve and implementation process must happen fast  
• Has outstanding support - it is crucial for a timely reaction 
• Must support the latest versions of each of the integrated systems 

 An integration tool that sums up all the above features will enhance the capabilities of each of the systems and give you great flexibility. An example of such a comprehensive integration platform is ZigiOps. It is a no-code integration platform that can connect Salesforce and ServiceNow in minutes, easy to configure and use, and does not require prior technical knowledge.  

Check out another amazing blog by Diana here: Jira - Salesforce Integration: Why You Should Use a No-code Integration Platform?

How to integrate Salesforce and ServiceNow?

For the purpose of this guide and to get a better understanding of what an actual integration process looks like from the inside, we will use ZigiOps as a connecting platform between Salesforce and ServiceNow’s systems.  

First, we must install ZigiOps and log in. The installation process is easy and straight. Upon entering the tool, we see the Dashboard, which summarizes the data for current integrations, systems, and licenses. All we need to do to complete the integration is add the two systems we want to connect – in our case Salesforce and ServiceNow, and then from the template library, choose and load the template that fits our use case. A few more small tweaks are needed, and we are done. We defy which system is our first, and which second. In this example, Salesforce is our first system, while ServiceNow- is our second (the destination). We click Save and we are done. 

ZigiOps successfully syncs important data like regular and custom fields, lifecycle fields, comments, and attachments. 

Final thoughts

Keeping a close eye on all client-related processes and operations is extremely important for businesses. That's why CRM and service desk applications are so deeply planted into the IT ecosystem of every modern enterprise - no matter its size or industry. Systems like Salesforce and ServiceNow contain all the necessary features to enable users to control and improve business operations. Most companies, however, use them separately. This, over time, leads to data disruption and miscommunication when information needs to be transferred manually from one system to the other.   

A Salesforce ServiceNow integration can solve these issues. It will allow seamless end-to-end data transfer in real-time, better handling of customer-related issues, and their prompt resolution.