Integration - WhiteRock

Integrating Your Tech Stack One Bite at a Time

Fully integrating your systems is a process – and trying to integrate everything everywhere all at once can create quite a mess. So, where should you start? To navigate this integration maze successfully, it’s essential to adopt a step-by-step approach, focusing on each pillar of your business one at a time. Let’s delve deeper into a comprehensive roadmap for integrating your entire tech stack seamlessly.

Crafting Your Integration Strategy

Developing a robust integration strategy is the cornerstone of success in unifying your tech stack. Begin by articulating clear objectives and defining what success looks like for your integration initiative. Consider the following questions:

How will integration align with and contribute to your organization’s overarching goals?
What specific ROI metrics do you aim to achieve through integration efforts?
How will integration streamline workflows and enhance collaboration across departments?

By answering these questions thoughtfully, you can establish a cohesive strategy that aligns with your business flow and lays the groundwork for seamless integration.

Pillar-by-Pillar Integration Approach

Take a moment to think of the pillars of your business. Let’s explore each pillar with a goal of connecting a single system at a time to push and pull data in and out of your central CRM hub.

Administration Integration

Identify the primary administrative tool within your organization, such as an ERP system or accounting software.
Establish seamless integration with your CRM platform to ensure a centralized repository of customer data, financial records, and operational insights.
Automate data sync processes to eliminate manual entry errors and enhance data accuracy.

Operations Integration

Evaluate operational tools and platforms utilized for project management, task allocation, and order fulfillment.
Integrate these systems with your CRM to enable real-time visibility into project status, inventory levels, and customer interactions.
Implement bi-directional data synchronization to facilitate information flow between systems and empower decision-making.

Marketing Integration

Assess the marketing automation tools and analytics platforms employed by your marketing team.
Integrate these systems with your CRM to create a unified view of customer interactions, campaign performance, and lead generation efforts.
Leverage integrated data to personalize marketing campaigns, track conversion metrics, and optimize marketing spend.

Sales Integration

Explore sales enablement tools, prospecting platforms, and customer relationship management solutions utilized by your sales team.
Integrate these tools seamlessly with your CRM to streamline lead management, opportunity tracking, and sales forecasting.
Enable data enrichment to provide sales representatives with actionable insights and personalized engagement strategies.

Continuous Optimization and Innovation

Integration is an iterative process that requires ongoing monitoring, optimization, and innovation. By regularly soliciting feedback from end-users, you can identify pain points and areas for improvement within the integrated ecosystem. Stay abreast of emerging technologies and industry best practices to ensure your tech stack remains agile and adaptable to evolving business requirements.

So, if you find yourself asking, “How do I integrate my entire tech stack?”, remember to take it…

One Bite at a Time!

By adopting a methodical, pillar-by-pillar approach to integration, organizations can unlock the full potential of their tech stack and drive sustainable growth. From administration to sales, seamless integration fosters efficiency, collaboration, and data-driven decision-making. Embrace integration as an ongoing journey of optimization and innovation, and position your organization for success in the digital age.

If you’re ready to take this next step in your integration journey and could use some support to get up and running, our team at WhiteRock is here for you and ready to chat.

Salesforce Integrations Unleashed

Integration, Salesforce

salesforce_integration

In today’s dynamic business world, Salesforce stands as a powerhouse for building lasting customer relationships. Yet, its true potential shines when seamlessly integrated with other business applications. Here’s why Salesforce integrations are a game-changer:

1. Symphony of Connectivity:

Salesforce integrations break down departmental silos, creating an interconnected ecosystem that enhances collective efficiency across various business functions—from marketing and customer service to finance and HR.

2. Elevating Customer Experience:

By consolidating data from different touchpoints, integrations provide a 360-degree view of the customer. This empowers teams to anticipate needs, address concerns promptly, and offer personalized solutions, fostering loyalty and long-term relationships.

3. Boosting Operational Efficiency:

Integrating Salesforce with other tools like ERP systems and project management platforms streamlines processes, eliminates manual tasks, and accelerates workflows. This frees up time for strategic initiatives, ultimately increasing productivity.

4. Future-Proofing Your Business:

Salesforce integrations offer flexibility for scaling and adapting to evolving business needs. Whether incorporating AI or integrating with third-party applications, Salesforce ensures your CRM system stays at the forefront of technological advancements.

Conclusion:

Salesforce integrations aren’t just about connectivity; they’re about transforming a CRM into a comprehensive business solution. By embracing this power, businesses can break free from constraints, enhance customer experiences, boost efficiency, and future-proof their operations. Unlock the potential of Salesforce integrations and stay ahead in the competitive landscape.

Why WhiteRock?

With the right partner of Salesforce experts that you can trust and count on, your integration can be greatly simplified and you can feel confident in your new and improved single source of truth. We bring our knowledge of marketing and sales flows, digital transformation, and what “parts to order” for your business into this partnership. At WhiteRock, we take the time to understand your needs and map out a plan to optimize the right solution. As your organization changes over time, you have us to keep your systems aligned. We support you and set you and your systems up for success.

WhiteRock has the experience needed to help fine-tune your complex processes through highly accountable change process flows related to improvements in your CRM and related systems. Reach out to us at learnmore@whiterocktech.net or via the form below!

Originally published on LinkedIn.

Bring It Together With a Salesforce-ERP Integration

CRM, Integration, Salesforce, White Rock Value

Salesforce ERP Integration

For a successful sales strategy and toolset, integrate your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system with Salesforce. By bringing these two key business tools together, you extend the capabilities to optimize the business process flows that reflect how your business serves its customers and prospective customers.

Many companies navigate day-to-day work by leveraging both their CRM system and their ERP system separately. Below, you will find a few approaches bringing your two most powerful customer data tools together through a Salesforce-ERP integration and the associated benefits.

3 Approaches to Integrating

How your company chooses to approach integration efforts depends heavily on your needs, your technical expertise, and your IT budget. Let’s explore these 3 together.

1. Build Your Salesforce-ERP Integration From Scratch

If your organization has a deep technical understanding, you may choose to manually register your data from one system to the other. Keep in mind that building from scratch takes a lot of time, money and resources to be successful. If your organization finds the trade off of added control and customization worth it, this approach may be worth exploring.

With this approach, it never hurts to consult with a partner to consider the pros and cons of an investment in building this yourself. At WhiteRock, we can certainly tailor a solution for your needs, though we rarely face use cases that are so unique that they haven’t already been resolved in our current target customer market space.

2. Utilize a Connector

Salesforce offers purpose-built connectors that can directly connect your Salesforce account to another system like your ERP system. These are limited to the more popular ERP platforms like Oracle ERP and Microsoft Dynamic ERP. Therefore, your options for this approach may be limited based on your system.

In most cases, utilizing a connector will do the trick for the best price. However, there are a few limitations that we’ll want to discuss to ensure you are accomplishing what you hope to. When fewer endpoints are needed to sync and no future change is anticipated, then we will recommend this solution type.

3. Buy an ERP Integration Platform (iPaaS)

An integration platform as a service (iPaaS) is an application that helps connect your IT environment and manage your integrations. iPaaS solutions go beyond what connectors offer with the capability to build multiple integrations and have several use cases. These tools provide seamless integration, automatic data sharing, and error control with a wide range of features and prices to fit your needs.

This approach is typically the best fit for our customers. Some of these tools can be pricey but the benefits of a cost effective solution will provide the most dynamic, customizable, and maintainable solution.

Benefits of Integrating

A Salesforce-ERP integration can bring major benefits to your organization. Better customer experience, simplified decision-making, increased efficiency, improved data quality and reduced risk of error are just a few improvements that you may notice after choosing to bring these systems together.

Provide a Better Customer Experience

There’s nothing quite like having a crystal clear overview of your customer’s journey. By integrating Salesforce with your ERP system, you will gain an accurate 360-degree view of customer data across your organization. This will allow your team to serve customers in a more personalized way thanks to access to reliable up-to-date information. Providing this single source of customer truth leads to improved customer satisfaction, allowing your customer to feel seen and heard. Bringing the accurate pricing power of your ERP system together with fast quoting capabilities of your Salesforce CRM also elevates your customer service.

Simplified Decision-Making

Enhance your decision-making process by integrating Salesforce with your ERP system. When you bring data from across your organization together, you access a true 360 view of your real-time business health. This level of visibility also serves to improve the internal decision making capabilities key to getting ahead of the competition.

Enjoy Increased Efficiency

Another major benefit of integrating these two essential systems is an increase in team productivity stemming from ease of access to important customer and sales information. When your sales team can see inventory levels from your ERP system from within Salesforce for example, they get back that time previously spent switching systems. With all information from activity and sales history to credit limits brought together, team collaboration and communication across departments is greatly simplified. Less time is needed to search for accurate information when you have a single source of data truth to rely on. Integrating your systems provides you with an end-to-end view of business processes from order placement to delivery.

Improve Data Quality & Reduce Risk of Error

Speaking of your single source of data truth, the power of Salesforce allows you to automate data management tasks to ensure absolute accuracy. Manual data entry, especially when being conducted in two separate systems has a significantly greater chance of error. By integrating your systems, you open up a world of automation possibilities to make it even easier to keep your data clean and reliable. Reducing or eliminating errors can play a big-time role in helping your organization save money.

Are You Ready to Integrate?

As you consider your own integration journey and how the benefits could impact your business, be sure to consider whether a partner like WhiteRock could help make this a painless and worthwhile endeavor. No matter which approach you choose, we are here to help and have the experience with this process to ensure your integration goes smoothly and successfully.

Why WhiteRock?

With the right partner of Salesforce experts that you can trust and count on, your integration can be greatly simplified and you can feel confident in your new and improved single source of truth. We bring our knowledge of marketing and sales flows, digital transformation, and what “parts to order” for your business into this partnership. At WhiteRock, we take the time to understand your needs, and map out a plan to optimize the right solution. As your organization changes over time, you have us to keep your systems aligned. We support you and set you and your systems up for success.

The Relationship Between CRM and Accounting Systems

CRM, Integration, Salesforce, White Rock Value

How can a CRM system be beneficial to produce performance changes in your sales process without the accounting history of your accounts and contacts? I strongly believe that it is not possible. As Salesforce has evolved from a CRM platform to a platform to integrate all systems to your customers and prospective customers, the transformation of a common, simple view of all data in one place has never been more important. Integrating accounting transaction history, credit limits, and other key data in the accounting system to the CRM account/contact view in Salesforce or any CRM drives a faster pace for decision making and simplicity. On this topic, I want to share four examples of the value of integrating your CRM and accounting systems and then conclude with a suggestion for you to consider for your organization.

Example 1 – Knowing the “flight path” of your buyer’s journey to a sale promotes a healthy forecast for your whole organization

The days of flying by the seat of your pants in sales are ending and have evolved into a sales process that can be executed consistently by all sales team members. The result is relevant sales activity is captured quickly, easily, and affordably by sales deal stages in a CRM system. Over the last several years and peaking in 2020, the sales efforts must be quantified and organized for understanding and forecasting the predicted sales timing and dollar amount. When this flow of work is consistently input by all sales team members, then revenue and cash flow will be known and can build a revenue forecast that can be relied upon. When the sales team has this insight along with current customer sales history, credit limits, terms, and product/service lines used, the sales team will have all the valuable data needed to support their newest sales and find common characteristics to continue to guide their success.

Example 2 – Accrual vs Cash basis of sales opportunities

I mentioned in Example 1 how the days of flying by the seat of your pants in sales are obsolete. What this means is working on your sales deals and not tracking the progress of that deal. When this happens, a sale technically is only known when the deal closes. From an accounting perspective, if you do not accrue expenses and only book when the expense is paid, this is the cash basis method. Therefore, the same holds true in tracking deals in the CRM system. If you are not tracking sales progress in the sales process, this is equal to a cash basis sales approach. We do not have forecast or prediction capabilities until the sale is closed. Organizations need to “accrue” their sales process just as the accounting system accrues expenses and other events that are recognized but paid or closed yet.

Example 3 – Valuing the importance of information in the CRM and accounting systems equally

One thing is for sure: you cannot prepare a correct tax return for the organization without an exact and organized accounting system. The same is true about the sales process: if the sales activity is not organized by sales stage from learning about the prospect’s interest to the sale close, then there is not a reliable forecast of revenue and cash flow that can be used to capture the whole picture accurately of the business performance.

Example 4 – How and what to integrate between CRM and Accounting

If I have convinced you of the importance of integration, then the next step is how to integrate and what to integrate between your CRM and accounting systems. First, how? Depending on what CRM and accounting system is in place, there are dozens of solutions usually. If your team does not have the experience and skillset for this, then there are many innovation and technology companies that can help. Certainly, our firm can help. Second, what? This depends; but for sure at a minimum, you need insight into sales history, quotes, and other specific information like past due status, credit terms and credit limits are important. All these components from accounting need to be displayed on the account view.

I will finish with this: if you believe that integrating your CRM and accounting systems is valuable but you cannot achieve this without help, then call me. And, if you do not believe this and don’t care to achieve this then I want to know why, so call me. Having a solid integration between these two so systems will unify your information systems, enable faster decision making, and better experiences for all of your folks and your customers and future customers.

Cultivating Connected Customer Experiences in 2023

CRM, Integration, Salesforce, White Rock Value

Connected Customer Experience

Today, the way your company cultivates connected experiences for customers may be worth evaluating. Salesforce’s latest State of the Connected Customer report highlighted cultivating cohesive and connected digital experiences as an up-and-coming trend shaping the future of customer engagement.

Customer experience is definitely a key differentiator for reaching and keeping customers. As such, it’s a great area to keep a pulse on and to continuously improve as expectations increase. The connected consumer values their brand relationships and experiences. Studies have found that customers view their experience as being just as important as the product or service provided.

The Increasing Expectations For Customer Experience

66% of customers say that they feel like companies treat them like a number. Thus, customers hope for companies to show them that they see them as unique individuals. They also expect that unique treatment regardless of the communication channel that is used. Additionally, customers want companies to understand how and where they want to engage.

A truly connected customer experience will set a company apart. It brings customer touchpoints and data together across the organization in a noticeable way. Every team and every system is synchronized and aligned when it comes to engaging with customers.

Cultivate Exceptional Connected Experiences

Exceptional connected customer experiences require action. So, what steps can you take to build and create these experiences for your customers? By utilizing cross-channel strategies to deliver consistency from all individuals contributing to the customer experience, you will be one step closer to serving up the unique experience customers crave.

Eliminate Silos to Prioritize Consistency

Integrated customer experiences aren’t created from siloed data. Prioritize your customer by organizing your data architecture around them and give your team a 360-degree view. When your customer data comes together, you can eliminate disconnects between departments and start providing a consistent, personalized experience. Without fragmented customer support, customers will feel more like a valued individual and less like a number.

Bringing your data together also takes a heavy burden off of your team. The more you integrate your CRM and other systems to make data accessible from one central location, the more productive your team can be. Giving team members that time back allows them to be more focused on providing the top-notch service customers seek. Plus, 83% of customers say they’re more loyal to companies that provide consistency across departments. Ditching silos in favor of consistency is a big win-win!

Leverage AI for Improved Connectedness

Leveraging the AI features in Salesforce Service Cloud can assist your team in (ironically enough) better humanizing digital customer experiences. Features built into calling systems or live chat pull data from past experiences with a customer and their preferences to help service agents provide a more personalized experience.

Salesforce Makes It Possible

Salesforce provides companies with the tools needed to cultivate connections with customers and provide a seamless customer experience. The ability to turn massive amounts of customer data from across systems and departments into actionable solutions is truly a game changer for your customer experience.

WhiteRock Brings It All Together

Partnering with a team of Salesforce experts that you can trust and count on allows you to feel confident that your customer data is properly integrated into a single source of truth. We bring our knowledge of marketing and sales flows, digital transformation, and what “parts to order” for your business into this partnership. At WhiteRock, we take the time to understand your needs, and map out a plan to implement the right solution.

As your organization changes over time, you have us to keep your system aligned. We support you and set you up to exceed your customers’ expectations.

Solve the Greatest Smart Manufacturing Challenges With the Power of Salesforce

CRM, Integration, Salesforce

Solve Smart Manufacturer Challenges With Salesforce

When it comes to today’s challenges, how can smart manufacturers overcome pain points and modernize their systems? How do you keep your automation top-notch and stay ahead of the competition?

Thankfully, Salesforce has provided the tools to achieve just this. With the right partner on your side to optimize your systems, you can master Industry 4.0 and beyond.

How can Salesforce impact my manufacturing company?

Manufacturing companies have some unique needs in order to stay up to date on projects, pricing, and other key data through several stages of the manufacturing and delivery process. With the right Salesforce setup, your team will be able to manage an end-to-end view of your supply chain in accordance with SIPOC (Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer). Unify all information in one place and stay ahead of processes and challenges.

Salesforce solutions can be tailored to your needs. Your entire manufacturing process can be streamlined from sales to production and delivery to billing. Optimizing digital transformation is key for your business to keep up with the ever-changing manufacturing industry and the times.

What is the Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud?

Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud powers customer-centric operations through a purpose-built manufacturing platform. This tool unifies opportunities with demand forecasting, serves customers and distributors faster, and brings AI insights into your day-to-day operations. As an end-to-end CRM system specific to the manufacturing industry, this tool gives a full view of customer activity that helps drive predictable business development. Forecasting capabilities take into account the changing needs of your customers and market demands.

Customer Experience is King

One thing is overwhelmingly certain: now more than ever, it is essential to keep customer experience exceptional across all touchpoints. Stand out from the crowd (and the competition) with a faster and smarter customer experience. With technology optimized to the inner workings of your unique business, you can ensure that customers remain the focus every step of the way.

The next-level customer experience that you deliver is your greatest competitive advantage. Delivering quick, smart service wins brownie points with customers and keeps them coming back. Today’s most successful smart manufacturers prioritize not only their deliverables, but their superior customer experience and engagement.

From Legacy to the 360 View

Many manufacturing companies were built using inflexible IT legacy architecture that was never designed for interconnection and transparency. By integrating all systems with Salesforce, your company will have access to a single source of truth, real-time data, and a holistic, 360-degree view of customers and processes. It’s not uncommon to have a mixed bag of old and new systems addressing different needs within the same organization. Salesforce’s prioritization of a single-source of truth is imperative for forward-thinking companies. Your CRM must be at the center of all your systems.

Integrating all systems into Salesforce as your single source of data truth results in increased productivity and maximized revenue. When set up properly, your CRM should provide predictability and transparency across your smart manufacturing organization. From access to real-time data and accurate forecasting to simply being able to pair down the number of tools needed to get the job done, having a 360 view is truly a game-changer for any company.

Truly Accurate Forecasting Capabilities

Accurate forecasting is essential to the flow of your business. With a single source of all data, you will be able to fully trust the accuracy of your data and know what to expect. There are few things as dangerous as an unreliable or overstated forecast.

Your revenue forecast is vital for predicting sales, budgeting operational support and planning cash flow so accuracy is essential.

No Silos Here

Unite departments with visibility across the board into a single integrated solution. Siloed systems for sales and revenue management impact the bottom line. Keep your team on the same page and provide access to insights and accurate revenue information. Eliminate the need for manual data entry and avoid duplicate entries to save time and boost productivity for your team.

Sales Made Simple

With Salesforce’s help capturing essential sales data and providing timely insights to assist in boosting sales, your sales efforts see an increase in ROI. Enjoy high conversion rates, increased productivity, and shortened sales cycles.

Sales agreement functionality provides consolidated visibility into all terms negotiated with customers. This enables you to measure planned and actual revenue accordingly and verify inventory levels.

A well strategized and executed manufacturing CRM can easily provide insights into your customers and sales leads. This will help your company run more smoothly in the process.

Incorporating the Internet of Things

Integrating IoT with Salesforce allows you to keep a steady pulse on the machines at the heart of your operation. This integration allows you to optimize and plan for necessary maintenance needs.

Salesforce is even better with WhiteRock on your side

We bring our knowledge of marketing and sales flows, digital transformation, and what “parts to order” for your business into this partnership. WhiteRock is a team of Salesforce experts that you can trust and count on to get you running full-speed! We know the industry, take the time to understand your needs, and map out a plan to implement the right solution.

WhiteRock can optimize your CRM journey so that your team is unified through a standard KPI reporting schema. The reporting and dashboard setup is the output that helps with fast and accurate decision making. This is the ultimate achievement. As your organization changes over time, you have us to keep your system aligned. We support you as you serve your customers in an unavoidable, ever-changing environment. WhiteRock has the experience needed to help your complex manufacturing processes through highly accountable change process flows related to improvements in your CRM and related systems. Reach out to us at learnmore@whiterocktech.net or via the form below!