Running your business operations and huddling to keep up with the industry trends? With more and more organizations redefining their infrastructure to digitize it all, it becomes necessary for you to do the same. In case you aren’t sure which applications to use and how this article will help you understand what SAP and Salesforce are. Besides, we also help you understand how Salesforce and SAP integration transforms your business operations.
What are Salesforce and SAP?
Salesforce is undoubtedly one of the most popular CRM software available over the web. It offers areas of Enterprise CRM solutions that can be used by enterprises and organizations to rev up their business operations. Whether you seek a solution that could simplify their end to end operations or one that helps streamline critical processes, Salesforce is the best bet.
SAP, on the other hand, is an excellent enterprise resource planning software, that allows you to keep track of your enterprise resources, manage them, and regulate your expenses. What’s best about the SAP ERP platform is that you can not only streamline but also automate and optimize the processes, improving overall business productivity.
Experts believe that integration of an CRM software with that of SAP ERP would enhance its ability, adding to the features and functionalities provided by the same. Having said that, what could be best than Salesforce CRM for your SAP infrastructure?
Advantages of integration
It is believed that the integration of SAP with Salesforce helps business organizations organize their everyday sales data, customer information. This helps them make the most out of lost sales and potential information. But that’s just a part indicating how the integration benefits. To help you understand better, here we outline the advantages of integrating Salesforce with SAP.
Read more: Augment SAP Integration Strategy to Optimize Organizational Efficiency — Here’s why.
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Improved Data Management:
As said above, the integration of Salesforce with SAP ensures that every data or piece of information added to the system is ubiquitously available to all other departments in the infrastructure. Under no circumstance would you need to have duplicate or copies of the same customer information.
Besides, whenever you add new customer information in the portal, everyone concerned is notified about the same. For instance, if the sales team enters a row of a new customer with a new order, the data is shared with the manufacturing department to accelerate the production process.
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Reduction in errors:
One of the most obvious advantages of integrating SAP with Salesforce is that it automates most of the data entry and processing tasks. This means that employees no longer need to manually feed in data which ultimately reduces the possibility of error. Not to mention that the data entered is faster and better as compared to the conventional methods of adding customer information.
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Real-time Processing:
As mentioned above, the integration leads to the creation of a centralized database with access to all the concerned departments. With automated alerts and timely notifications, the ERP department can, at the same instant, access the data of the newly acquired customer. Irrespective of the fact that the Sales team might be in the field whereas the ERP department in an office in a different city, the data is shared with all. This optimizes the end-to-end operations improving performance and efficiency.
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Organized Cashflow:
The integration of Salesforce with SAP has another benefit of improving the cash flow within the organization. It is seen that the solution has a built-in feature of sending alerts and notifications to the concerned department at the right time.
For instance, if there are accounts overdue, the integration solution would automatically send an alert to the accounting and finance department, notifying about the same. This ensures that all are actively performing and that under no situation, overdue are missed, helping organizations in optimizing their cash flow system. Not to forget the in-depth information retrieved and accessed by the financial managers. All of this facilitates better cashflow management helping you meet your end goals.
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Boosts ROI:
With all of that being said, the integration of SAP with Salesforce helps you conduct your business better with real-time insights. Better management, improved cash flow, optimized customer experience, and real-time visibility, all of this boosts the overall ROI of the organizations.
Challenges Faced During the Integration Process
True that the benefits of the integration compel you to make the move. However, the process is easier said than done. If you think that you can simply integrate one with another, you might end up facing errors.
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For one, SAP is an on-premise software. Salesforce, on the other hand, is a cloud-native solution.
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Integrating and synchronizing data from one platform to another is a complicated task.
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One must process opportunities within the Salesforce until order completion whereas execution in SAP must be taken into consideration.
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Draft a system where all of the data history and the financial status must be accessible in real-time within the Salesforce software.
How to integrate Salesforce with SAP?
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To begin, log in to Salesforce Development Account. Move to the setup Md then in the Quick Find Box, type API.
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Download the WSDL file and this to build the SOAP project.
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Next, to create WSDL/XSD:
- Use SOAPui to create an upsert request.
- Now create XSD using external tools.
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Import external definition, and create another ESR object. Now map the message with SOAP requests.
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You now need an API lookup code for session ID and server URL.
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Now we need an ID configuration.
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Finally, create two ICOs extracting data from ECC.
Once done, send the same to Salesforce.
Wondering how to start with the integration process?
Well, you can always start integrating Salesforce with SAP all by yourself, yet it is recommended that you seek expert support.
Stridely Solutions is one of the leading IT consulting companies offering the entire suite of IT solutions to enterprises and organizations across the globe. We have a separate team of experts that will help you throughout the integration phase. With experts and the required expertise, we offer end to end integration solutions. Starting with a consultation to implementation, we help you with all.