This article takes a high-level look at some of the problems integration solves. Why is it a high level look? Recently I got lambasted by a somewhat angry group of end-users for talking technical while hosting a round table.

In my defense, I'd mentioned something technical and momentum just kicked in. To them, I was disconnected from reality and needed a hard reboot or something worse. It turns out some people love technology and others just want solutions! To them, technology is a curse.

So, lessons learned, I'm taking a high-level look but spoiler alert, at the end I revert to my old self and mention some technical insights into our amazing Sitecore to Salesforce integration.

Problems you know about!

• Your data sucks! You no longer trust it. You have lead and contact records in Sitecore, Salesforce and probably somewhere else. You are not alone. Forester found only 38% of customer data management executives know where all their customer data is stored 
• You cannot be sure that matched records in different systems belong to the same person. This is also common, and costly 
• There are duplicate records in each system and across systems
• Data syncing makes it unlikely your information is up-to-the-minute information. You have no idea when it was last synced
• Your backup and restore capabilities are in an unknown state
• Getting Sitecore form data into Salesforce is either non-existent, onerous or requires developer effort 
• You want simple solutions to these problems and don't want a massive technical project 

Problems you don't know about!

• Your website lead capturing form will catastrophically fail if a social media campaign goes viral
• Syncing website data to external systems will stall your website
• Your sales team is impeded:
  • They operate not knowing the digital body language of their prospects. Without access to website behavior, they are missing the most current, honest, and insightful look at a prospect's nuances, sales readiness, and state of mind. This needed prior to important sales conversations
  • They cannot control Sitecore personalization to increase prospect engagement during the sales process
  • They cannot drive targeted content to prospects during sales calls
• Building an integration from scratch is highly risky. You don't know what you don't know, for example, Salesforce APIs go offline if they are called too often.

How does integration help?

Integrating Sitecore and Salesforce resolves many of the challenges above. One strategy alone, creating a single source of truth, greatly increases data integrity. By this, I simply mean, put your data in Salesforce and get it when you need it. This eliminates complex syncing, solves data integrity issues, makes your data more available, creates more backup and restore options, and much more. 

As promised, a plug for S4S. S4S is the leading Sitecore to Salesforce integration solution and currently used by many Fortune 1000 companies. S4S supports a single source of data and empowers sales reps by exposing Sitecore analytics in Salesforce. Then S4S gets really interesting. During sales calls, reps can access a website visitor's session and drive custom content to their browser. They can, for example, direct them to relevant product pages, hidden pages, Google maps or calendars, and even download pdfs. Reps can then override Sitecore personalization from Salesforce ensuring the visitor has a personalized experience next time they return to the website.

Read more about data sources or to learn about the benefits and features of S4S please call us.