💃 12 Reasons Why Salesforce - ERP Integrations are Hard 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! There are a handful of binary events in life that makes you a HAVE, or a HAVE NOT.

And if you are a HAVE, you’re changed….forever. Example events include-

🛩️ Flying first class. Economy will never be the same.

💔 Having your heart broken. Love and hurt take on new meanings.

👨‍💻 A Salesforce-ERP integration, from start to finish. The hardest thing you’d ever did in Salesforce just moved down 5 notches.

The ChaCha is an expert in two of these, but today we’re gonna focus on Salesforce-ERP integrations 😜.

WHAT IS IT?

What is ERP?

Let’s start with a quick definition of ERP.

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planner. An ERP’s purpose is...to manage big, enterprise things. Kinda ambiguous.

To clear it up a little, here are example attributes of a company that uses an ERP-

High Count, High Cycle of Things - Manufacturers, like Ford, have lots of little parts that make up the millions of cars they produce each year. And supply chains, like Amazon - ERPs make miracles-of-mankind, like Prime shipping, possible. These massive datasets require ERP handling.

Financials - F500 companies have annual revenues between $7BB and $600BB. Don’t you think Walmart needs a powerful application to manage their $600BB in revenue?

Human Resources - Much to the dismay of HR professionals everywhere, ERPs may be used for HR. If you work at a large company like American Express, and you login to your HR portal, that UI’s 1980s vibe is brought to you by an ERP 🙃.

Unlike CRM, there aren’t a ton of ERP vendors out there. Oracle and SAP dominate the F500, and “lighter” ERPs like Netsuite and Microsoft Dynamics (ERP, not CRM) are popular for small and medium-sized business.

WHY IS SALESFORCE-ERP INTEGRATION SO HARD?

Salesforce-ERP Integration Pain

1) Complexity 

Captured in a single word, the reason Salesforce-ERP integrations are so hard is because they’re complex. But let’s dive deeper ⬇️.

2) Multiple Vendors

Too many cooks in the kitchen 🧑‍🍳? Ha, you wish it was that simple! Too many chefs, with too many cooks, in too many kitchens.

Salesforce partners. ERP partners. Middleware partners. More partners increases complexity 💯.

You have to communicate to multiple groups, instead of just one or two. And there are different incentives, practices, and styles across partners, too.

3) Bad Partners

Special shoutout to the bad partners who make everyone’s life miserable. An integration project team is as strong as the weakest link.

By the way, once they’re in, it’s extremely difficult to kick a partner out (but it certainly happens, usually way too late, though).

4) Knowledge Sharing

Salesforce-ERP integration requires low-friction knowledge sharing of large scale apps.

So, not only does communication and collaboration need to be tight, but the topics of discussion span highly-technical 🧑‍🏫 and in-the-weeds business process 👷.

Think about that- a project that takes years and is stacked with engineers… individual clicks matter…A LOT. For example, populating that “Sale Date” field can kickoff an integration that cost $1 million and took 8 months to build 🤯.

5) Multiple Applications

Increasing the count of things also increases complexity. Just like mo’ partners = mo’ complexity, mo’ applications = mo’ complexity.

For example, the marketing app that needs base data, which lives in the ERP. But the marketing app is integrated with the CRM, not the ERP. And so, that base data must live in the CRM.

And if that base data changes in the ERP, then it must change in the CRM, so it can change in the marketing app 😵‍💫.

And you get to work all this out with the marketing team, the ERP partner, and the Salesforce partner 🥵.

6) Data Synchronization

This one is so complex that it got its own article 😅.

7) Middleware

Middleware has been mentioned a few times, but let’s give the elephant in the room some shine 🔦.

Middleware’s sole purpose of existing is to manage complexity.

ERP-to-Salesforce and Salesforce-to ERP integrations cannot survive on point-to-point architecture. Of course, data transformation and business process are big reason for this. But exception management is not possible without the additional layer of features and functionality that middleware provides.

In a point-to-point integration, you may fire off a record from Salesforce that never makes it to the ERP…..and never know it failed 😞. Middleware solves for this.

If you’re interested in learning more about 👉 middleware 👈

8) Testing

The dirty T-word 🙊.

But this isn’t QA’ing a Flow.

This is the client and partners, the potpourri of applications, and an encyclopedia of test scripts. Oh…and don’t forget the curated test data.

This is smoke testing, stress testing, and regression testing. And the cherry on top - the infamous, weeks-long CRP testing.

Why would a client invest years and $10s of millions in an ERP implementation and integration project, and not test the snot out of it? (fun fact - it’s pretty common for the client NOT to test the snot out of it 🤷🏻)

9) Phased Approach…or Not?

Salesforce-ERP implementations are-

1. A big lift. High effort.

2. Massive change for the business.

3. Really expensive.

Is it better to rip the band-aid off? Or to do half now, half later? Or some other phased approach?

These kinda decisions are why execs make the big bucks. There is so much to consider and so much at stake.

A frontline implementer’s preference is likely to rip the band-aid off. A phased approach is akin to having the same nightmare every night 👻.

10) Legacy Things

💾 Legacy tech - some old random app that cannot be replaced. And so, it must be accommodated.

💾 Legacy people - a stubborn executive who must have dirt on the owner and gets a ridiculous business requirement in that nearly derails the project.

💾 Legacy data - ugh.

💾 Legacy business processes - the biz is gonna biz. Sometimes that wacky manager approval process just has to go into the new solution.

💾 Legacy customers - that one client who is loyal to you and you’re loyal to them…to a fault. You choose to build exceptional things, like line-item or segmented invoices that align with their general ledgers (basically you’re doing their accounting for them…).

11) Level Up

Ending this article on positive notes 🙌.

Yes, Salesforce-ERP integrations are hard, and grueling, and…you get the idea. They also level you up.

Just like your first Marathon is hard and grueling. You level up running one 💪.

In general, doing hard things is the most sure way to level up ✅.

12) Tech Perspective

You will have a completely new perspective of Salesforce after your first Salesforce-ERP integration.

Your awareness of technology stacks will become higher. You will have a clearer understanding of the role a CRM plays in an enterprise stack. You will be shocked-and-awed by the amount of field mapping required.

And you will develop a HUGE respect for ERP implementers 🦸; the good ones will have a special place on your mantle, next to your Ken Griffey Jr rookie card and that picture of you at the Backstreet Boys meet ‘n greet 😉.

FINAL WORDS

Takeaway

If you’ve heard horror stories about Salesforce - ERP integrations, they’re probably all true ✅.

They’re hard. They’re expensive. People will leave (or be fired from) the project team or not long after Go-Live (if you get there).

But they also teach you a lot.

The stuff you hear about, but you don’t fully understand or respect until you’re sitting in the chair doing the things.

You are guaranteed to come out of an ERP integration project with scars, but also much wiser, with a respect for ERP implementers, and feeling happy about being Salesforce professional 🙂.

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