Blog
August 14, 2014
The goal of Salesforce is to bring your various data sources into one central location to make the right data available to the right people at the right time in a way that they can use. However, getting the right data into Salesforce is key and can also be a key challenge. To help you tame the challenge, we’ve compiled six steps to help you best prepare for a successful data integration between your systems of record and Salesforce.
- Identify the specific data you need to support the development of targeted lists, identify top candidates and improve outreach. Just because data can be brought into Salesforce, doesn’t mean that it should.
- Determine the frequency of data coming info Salesforce. Should it be imported hourly, daily, weekly?
- Identify unique record keys to reduce duplicates, e.g. email address. This is an important step to keep your data clean. If there is no unique record key in the source data, one can always be created by using several fields together.
- Determine if the integration is one- or two-way. Two-way is appealing but will add to the timeline and expense of the project. One-way integration gets the data into Salesforce where it can be used to engage constituents, but still keeps it locked down to maintain the source system as the system of record.
- Document any transformations that may need to occur on the data and determine where that transformation will occur. For example, if a field in your source system currently displays to users with the values of Hot, Lukewarm, or Cold, and the values in Salesforce display as High, Medium, and Low, this difference should be documented and a decision made as to when and where that change in the data value will be made and who will be making the change.
- Determine if a middleware tool is required to assist with extraction, transformation and load. A middleware tool will sit between the data source and Salesforce and help in getting the data load prepped in a format that can be loaded into the Salesforce data model, as well as automate the regular exchange of data.. These tools are offered through various products such as Informatica, Jitterbit and CastIron just to name a few.
