How to Integrate with Salesforce: A Concise Guide to Integrate with Other Apps, Platforms, and Solutions

Valuable data is often dispersed across various tools used in business operations, leading to a fragmented approach that can impede productivity and result in missed opportunities. This is where Salesforce integration steps in. By connecting your most trusted CRM to other important business applications, you can create a unified system that provides a 360-degree view of your customers, streamlines workflows and automates tasks.

This article will explore the benefits of integrating Salesforce with a wide range of tools, from marketing automation platforms to inventory management systems. We will discuss various integration techniques, such as API integration, to ensure a smooth data flow and help you fully utilize the CRM application.

Integrating Salesforce with other business tools breaks down data silos and centralizes information, enhancing collaboration and decision-making. There are several types of Salesforce integrations, including data integrations, application integrations, point-to-point integration, hub-and-spoke integration, and Enterprise Service Bus Integration (ESB). Each type caters to different requirements and complexity levels, offering unique benefits.

What is a Salesforce integration?

Salesforce integration is the process of connecting Salesforce CRM with other platforms, applications, and databases. This connection allows for seamless data exchange and synchronization, enhancing the overall functionality and efficiency of the business ecosystem.

The core benefits of integrating Salesforce are:

• Improved data visibility: Integration centralizes data from various sources, providing a comprehensive view of customer interactions and business operations.
• Streamlined workflows: By connecting different applications, organizations can reduce manual data entry and automate processes, leading to more efficient workflows.
• Enhanced automation: Integration enables automation of routine tasks, freeing up resources for more strategic activities. This increases productivity and operational efficiency.

Understanding the Salesforce integration architecture

Salesforce integration architecture is the design and plan that outlines how Salesforce CRM will interact with other systems, applications, and databases. It plays a crucial role in successful integration as it ensures smooth data exchange, synchronization, and overall enhanced functionality of an organization.

Common integration architecture patterns

Here are some common Salesforce integration architecture patterns:

• Point-to-point (P2P): Also known as one-to-one integration, P2P integration involves direct communication between two systems. In this pattern, a message is sent from one system to another via a 1-1 relationship. This type of integration is simple and efficient when dealing with a few systems but can become complex and expensive to maintain as the number of systems increases.
• Enterprise service bus (ESB): Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) integration involves a middleware platform that mediates the data exchange between Salesforce and other systems. In this pattern, each system within the integration gets an adapter that can be plugged and unplugged into the ‘bus,’ making it more scalable as integration requirements change over time.
• Hub-and-spoke: In the Hub-and-Spoke integration pattern, Salesforce acts as a centralized hub facilitating communication between other connected systems. The hub is responsible for routing all traffic, reducing the need for multiple connections required in point-to-point integration. This pattern simplifies the integration process, especially when dealing with multiple systems.

What are the different Salesforce integration options?

Salesforce offers a variety of integration options to connect with other systems and platforms. Here are some of the key integration types:

• API integration: Salesforce provides robust APIs based on industry standards like REST and SOAP. These APIs allow for easy integration between Salesforce and external endpoints, such as apps or enterprise integration hubs. Salesforce’s low-code integration tools and APIs can connect through standard data protocols such as OData.
• Salesforce Connect: Salesforce Connect allows you to integrate and access data from external sources and multiple Salesforce organizations. It enables working with data from these data sources within the Salesforce interface. Salesforce Connect can fetch data from on-premise applications, as well as cloud-based sources.
• Salesforce AppExchange: Salesforce AppExchange is the world’s largest business applications marketplace. It offers over 3,000 apps and components that extend Salesforce’s reach and functionality. All apps are pre-integrated to work seamlessly with Salesforce through automatic updates.
• MuleSoft: MuleSoft, acquired by Salesforce in 2018, provides easy-to-use tools to connect systems and data from anywhere. Using it, IT and business users can do more with less, quickly creating AI-powered workflows and integrations.
• Third-party integration tools: Third-party integration tools play a crucial role in connecting Salesforce with other platforms. They often provide pre-built connectors, making the integration process smoother and more efficient. Here are some notable tools:
  • CData: With the help of CData Sync, CData offers Salesforce integration solutions that allow you to leverage ETL/ELT data pipelines to streamline Salesforce data warehousing integration. It simplifies the process of putting Salesforce data to work, whether for managing operational reporting, connecting data for analytics, or ensuring disaster recovery.
  • io: Integrate.io offers a native Salesforce integration tool for connecting legacy databases, ERP systems, and other data sources to Salesforce. It allows users to work with data from these data sources within the Salesforce interface.
  • Talend: Talend offers Salesforce integration solutions that allow you to deliver a unified view of your customer with powerful and easy-to-use integration tools. It provides a fast and seamless integration experience.
  • Fivetran: Fivetran offers a connector that provides real-time, efficient data replication from Salesforce to your destination of choice.
  • Stitch: Stitch offers a Salesforce integration that replicates data from your Salesforce account. It supports different Salesforce APIs to replicate your data.

Salesforce integration considerations

Before implementing a Salesforce integration, it’s crucial to consider the following aspects to ensure a smooth and effective process:

• Creating an integration plan: An integration plan is a roadmap that identifies the steps to reach your integration goals. It involves understanding the business strategy and roadmap, collaborating with stakeholders, and brainstorming all possible business scenarios. A gap analysis should be carried out to study the current state vs the future state of the system and process as part of any Salesforce integration project plan.
• Deciding on an integration type: Carefully consider the type of integration, its pros and cons, and determine the solution that best fits the business use case in the integration matrix. For example, bulk update of data in Salesforce at a defined interval can be achieved by bulk jobs pulling the data from an external system.
• Choosing an integration solution: When choosing a Salesforce integration tool, consider factors such as cost, ease of use, scalability, and support for your desired integration use cases. Select the integration platform/tool that supports both current and future business requirements.
• Preparing the data: Data preparation involves creating an export file from your existing software, which will be used to import the data into Salesforce. The import file should be cleaned up for accuracy and consistency, which involves updating the data to remove duplicates, delete unnecessary information, correct spelling and other errors, and enforce naming conventions.
• Providing support and maintenance: Salesforce support services include regular system maintenance tasks such as software updates, data backups, and security checks. End-user support is important for ensuring that your employees can effectively use Salesforce. It’s also crucial to have a strategy for customization and development, data management, and optimization.

The CData difference

CData Sync provides a straightforward way to continuously pipeline your Salesforce data to any Database, Data Lake, or Data Warehouse, making it easily available for analytics, reporting, AI, and machine learning. By synchronizing data across various formats and structures, CData Sync enhances an organization’s capabilities for decision-making and strategy development.

To effortlessly ingest live and on-demand data from Salesforce along with more than 300 other SaaS, NoSQL, and Big Data sources, transforming it on the fly and delivering it quickly and accurately to any destination – be it a database, a data warehouse, or a data lake – using CData Sync.

As always, our support team is ready to answer any questions. Have you joined the CData Community? Ask questions, get answers, and share your knowledge in CData connectivity tools. Join us!