Salesforce, the cloud-based CRM application for sales and marketing, gives you a lot of insight into your customer base. By integrating Salesforce with Dynamics GP, you make both systems even more powerful. Without integration, processing is slow due to the requirement of pulling data manually from both systems, but real-time integration is possible using Dynamics GP Service Based Architecture and Salesforce Web Service API calls. Here are the types of data that can be synced between the two systems:
When planning your Salesforce/Great Plains integration, there are many considerations and complexities. Here are four tips to help you plan for successful integration.
- Develop a roadmap for your integration. Decide the specific types of data you want to connect.
- Look at how data flows through both systems. Determine which system will be the source for each type of data. Decide how integration can make that data available to the other system either through real-time synchronization or in a scheduled batch process.
- Take advantage of proven Salesforce integration strategies/patterns. Choose from:
- Data integration patterns that address the synchronization of data between Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics GP
- Process integration patterns for integrating the processing of functional flow across two or more applications.
- Use the eConnect/XML/Web Services add-ins for Microsoft Dynamics GP to help you implement the integration without the need for extensive custom programming or extensive knowledge of application databases. You will be able to import data to/from Salesforce to Great Plains, update master records, and handle header records and line items.
Choosing the best integration strategy for your systems isn’t trivial, but by automating and integrating Microsoft Dynamics GP and Salesforce, you will have much better visibility, timely updates of data and a reduction of duplicate data entry across the two applications.
