Salesforce and SAP Integration: Use Cases and Best Practices

Salesforce and SAP integration serves to combine the strengths of two leading software platforms to allow businesses to benefit from both at the same time.

Salesforce, a top-tier customer relationship management (CRM) platform, offers a comprehensive pack of tools to support businesses in managing customer relations, sales workflows, marketing automation, and analytics.

SAP, in turn, is a leader in enterprise resource planning (ERP), providing enterprise-level solutions to streamline business functions such as finance, human resources, supply chain management, and more.

In this post, you’ll learn how SAP and Salesforce integration contributes to business process automation, integrity, and overall efficiency; become aware of the main integration challenges; and get a set of best practices to perform the integration quickly and seamlessly.

SAP and Salesforce Integration Benefits

Salesforce is a powerful CRM, yet it may miss some important data consolidation features. This forces users to switch between several systems to get a full picture of their data. SAP, however, is all about data management. Salesforce integration with SAP allows for a unified view of crucial data, improving overall business productivity.

Here are the main benefits of SAP and Salesforce integration. 

• Improved data quality: Integration of two systems ensures seamless data exchange and sharing, which helps to keep your data accurate and spot inconsistencies before it’s too late.
• Increased efficiency: Consolidated data leads to streamlined business processes; with a single source of truth, businesses can operate more efficiently while making far fewer errors than before.
• Enhanced customer visibility: A unified data ecosystem allows businesses to have a full customer data view without switching between different sources, which gives a better understanding of customer behavior and helps make data-driven decisions.
• Improved collaboration among departments: Integrated data lets departments cooperate efficiently due to timely access to consolidated customer information.
• Reduced costs: The united data ecosystem with automated processes saves time on manual work and administrative tasks, allowing personnel to devote more time to more important matters like sales. 

SAP and Salesforce Integration Challenges

While SAP and Salesforce integration lets businesses achieve significant results in data integrity and boost productivity, the procedure comes with a set of challenges. These two systems are different in nature, and these differences make it somewhat challenging to execute a seamless integration. Yet, the challenges are not insurmountable, even if they require effort and skills to overcome them.

Here are the most common challenges that come with the SAP and Salesforce integration process: 

• Data mapping: The process of data mapping during Salesforce-SAP integration may take months and require great attention — all because of different data structures and formats.
• Data synchronization: While SAP can be batch-oriented, Salesforce operates in near real-time, so ensuring data consistency may take time and resources to prevent conflict between platforms.
• Security and compliance: SAP and Salesforce integration means making sure that security and compliance protocols meet the requirements of both platforms, which can take time.
• Process automation: Setting up automation for two comprehensive systems in parallel inevitably leads to process lags and requires time and the relevant skill set to successfully fix and connect the processes. 

Approaches to SAP and Salesforce Integration

SAP and Salesforce integration can be implemented in several ways depending on the business peculiarities and possibilities. In general, there are two main ways to do this, depending on the need to use third-party tools. 

Direct API and/or Custom Integration

The Direct API type of SAP and Salesforce integration is conducted without any third-party tools or integration platforms. The approach works for simple use cases with no overly complicated processes or large data amounts. This option doesn’t require additional fees or extra payments, as businesses don’t need to buy additional services — everything is already in the current subscription license.

Direct API integration may be executed with the help of native solutions. The most common solutions are (all are Salesforce-native): 

• REST API
• SOAP API
• Streaming API
• Web Service callouts
• Salesforce Connect 

In some cases, businesses may choose to develop custom middleware to streamline the integration of Salesforce and SAP. Although this approach does not require paying for third-party tools and allows businesses to save on integration, you will need the special technical expertise, time, and resources of the in-house development team. 

Third-Party IPaaS and Data Management Solutions

In more complicated SAP and Salesforce integration cases, businesses utilize special cloud platforms or software for data integration. These allow extracting data from one destination and transferring it to another one through APIs or built-in connectors.

IPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) solutions often include pre-built SAP adapters and save companies the trouble of building the integration environment from scratch. IPaaS platforms cover connection handling, authentication, and security features, keeping your data safe and speeding up the integration process. The most common choices of IPaaS platforms are: 

• MuleSoft by Salesforce: good for organizations that want to leverage the AI potential and look for a wide variety of settings, from pro-code to low-code options.
• SAP Integration Suite: best suits businesses looking for a user-friendly, cloud-based solution with pre-configured content templates.
• SIP by Deloitte: an optimal choice for those who need a dedicated SAP and Salesforce integration platform with SAP entities transfer and structured data presentation. 

Data management solutions offer a wider set of functionalities and can be used not only for integration but also for data validation, post-migration data management, etc. Traditionally, they offer a set of pre-defined connectors that allow for data connection and exchange from the necessary sources. All of this makes data management platforms the most universal choice for SAP and Salesforce integration, saving time, money, and resources.

DataLark is one such platform which offers robust connectivity options, including both internal and external interfaces for SAP business logic. It also has a specialized Plugin Builder that sets up a connection once and then allows reusing it for new projects and users across Salesforce-SAP ecosystems.

Salesforce and SAP Integration Best Practices

SAP and Salesforce integration needs thorough planning and preparation to make sure everything goes well and that all the data is successfully integrated. Here are some Salesforce and SAP integration best practices businesses should follow to achieve efficient system functioning and seamless data flow connectivity. 

• Meticulous planning: Carefully plan the migration process and prepare an integration roadmap for your business processes and workflows.
• Data consistency and governance: Ensure consistent and high-quality data across Salesforce and SAP systems by implementing data governance practices.
• Optimized performance: Improve integration process performance with third-party tools or establish an API-based integration.
• Comprehensive testing: Conduct functionality, unit, integration, and user acceptance testing to spot any errors that can appear during the integration, and validate data accuracy and overall system performance.
• Ongoing monitoring: Monitoring tools and error-handling mechanisms like automated alerts will help you track data synchronization and identify possible post-integration errors, ensuring timely fixes. 

Common Use Cases

SAP and Salesforce integration can bring business data operations to the next level, helping companies automate and streamline many processes. Let’s take a look at the most common and widespread use cases. 

Lead-to-Cash Process Automation

The lead-to-cash workflow automation is a perfect example of how SAP and Salesforce integration works. Part of the lead-to-cash process data (leads, opportunities, quotes, etc.) is usually stored in Salesforce, while another part (invoices, sales orders, delivery documents, etc.) is efficiently managed through SAP. The integration of the two systems allows businesses to streamline and automate the whole process, reducing manual workload and mitigating the risks of human-factor mistakes. 

Benefits include the following:

• Faster quote-to-order conversion
• Reduced manual errors
• Improved visibility for sales teams 

Real-Time Inventory and Product Availability

Once a buyer wants to make a purchase, its availability should be checked first to prevent delays and business lags. While orders are created in Salesforce, and inventory data management is conducted within SAP, integrating these two systems will automate product and inventory availability checks, saving time and improving usability.

Benefits include: 

• No overselling of out-of-stock products
• Improved customer trust thanks to accurate delivery dates
• Increased sales efficiency 

Order Management and Fulfillment

Another use case for SAP and Salesforce integration is sales order management. Salesforce is typically used to create orders from clients, while SAP stores all the data about product availability, customer details, and order quantities. Integrating the two systems, in this case, will help automate information exchange between SAP and Salesforce, streamlining the whole process of inventory management and order fulfillment.

Benefits include the following: 

• Faster order processing
• Reduced manual effort
• Improved visibility for sales & customer service teams 

Financial Data Synchronization

Once a deal is closed, its status is changed in Salesforce. Integrating Salesforce and SAP will allow automated data synchronization with SAP’s financial data management ecosystem. Sales, revenue, and expense data are unified, which allows businesses to create detailed finance reports and make decisions based on real-time analytics.

Benefits include: 

• Accurate revenue tracking
• Reduced reconciliation efforts
• Real-time financial visibility for sales teams 

Conclusion

The integration of SAP and Salesforce is like a combination of two superpowers that can either bring the business glory and success (if implemented correctly) or destroy it (if implemented in a hurry, greedily rushing for money). This post considers integration challenges and how you can overcome them with a set of best practices to make SAP and Salesforce systems work smoothly for your digitalization and automation.