The Benefits of Integrating NetSuite and Salesforce

In our last few blog posts, we’ve covered why you should integrate NetSuite and Salesforce into one consolidated system as well as how the integration can improve your organization’s overall business processes. In our final post for this series, we’re going to examine all of the NetSuite and Salesforce integration benefits.

Planning on Integration Benefits

As you think about the potential operational advantages and cost benefits of a NetSuite and Salesforce integration, you should take into account the inefficiencies of redundant data entry and the ambiguities of unreliable, inconsistent information. The savings in cost and time are generally not difficult to project and verify—and they can be substantial.

Harder to quantify will be the opportunity costs associated with slow or poorly informed decision-making and business management, but you may be able to gather feedback from your users to document such liabilities.

Boosting the Customer Experience

Improvements in the customer experience may result when, subsequent to a NetSuite and Salesforce integration, employees in your sales and service groups can be more responsive and provide answers or resolve issues more efficiently and reliably than they did before. They will probably reflect in your metrics for customer satisfaction and retention,
customer lifetime value, Net Promoter Score, and similar values.

Enhanced Scalability

Once you align roles and processes and integrate CRM and ERP systems, your operation may become greatly more scalable. For many of our clients that means they can more easily manage their growth, acquire more customers, manage more transactions, expand their portfolio of products and services, or generate more revenue at better margins.

They can move faster and with greater agility in response to strategic or market changes. Their infrastructure costs and other overhead may be a fraction of what they have been with the previous, disparate software systems, missing process handoffs, and inefficiencies.

Easier, More Meaningful Compliance Audits

Especially for public companies or organizations that need to follow demanding regulatory mandates, integrating NetSuite and Salesforce can make compliance simpler and less risky. External and internal auditors will find it easier to test contracts and activities such as invoicing or how a company recognizes revenue. Instead of just testing transactions in NetSuite ERP, they may also be able to test processes that begin in Salesforce CRM and eventually impact financial documents and data in NetSuite. With a greater range of testing and a higher level of auditor confidence, compliance audits can become more meaningful and reliable.

How Sikich Performs Integrations

Business user needs should determine what exactly a NetSuite and Salesforce integration looks like and how it should deliver unimpeded data flows and information access. Both NetSuite and Salesforce have their respective strengths, and Sikich experts know how to build on them when we perform an integration project. We use a variety of proven tools, together with our own development resources, to realize these integrations. Many excellent middleware software products can be helpful in achieving this, and the best
choice usually depends on which one fits a client’s requirements and goals most closely.

Fast Project Pace Includes Integration and Complementary Work

From beginning to end, a NetSuite and Salesforce integration project performed by Sikich usually takes close to four months. That time includes our research, fact finding, and a BPA in addition to the actual integration and handoff to you. Many clients think further when they see the improvements they can realize as a result of the integration. They begin to wonder about the advantages of connecting other applications to NetSuite and Salesforce. Within the same four-month period, Sikich often performs additional integrations of business systems that become more valuable connected than stand-alone.

Many times, our consultants also build Salesforce Communities within the scope of an integration project, making it possible for clients to securely share content and collaborate with customers and trading partners.

Proven Approaches and Best Practices

At Sikich, we feel strongly about repeatable, streamlined processes that keep our clients’ projects on track and their costs within planned budgets. We approach NetSuite and Salesforce integrations with sound methodologies and manage them to achieve the results you want to see. You can rely on Sikich to perform a successful integration project and take care of your other technology needs with equal success, no matter whether you are concerned about infrastructure, client computing, cybersecurity, or the best possible cloud strategy. Once we know your business and understand your objectives, we will always share our insight internally and apply learnings to subsequent efforts on your behalf. Sikich also offers business consulting and advisory services that can augment our work on your technology systems.

Rapid Route to Revenue

We worked with a high-tech manufacturing and services organization that wanted to streamline a needlessly complex order-to-cash process. Once we integrated the company’s NetSuite and Salesforce, things became easier.

Today, account reps perform the initial pricing and quoting in Salesforce. Based on the opportunity information, Salesforce automatically begins designing a project. Finalized pricing and resourcing take place in NetSuite, and flow into Salesforce to support the final
contract negotiations. Once the customer signs an agreement, this is first recorded in Salesforce, and the information flows into NetSuite for revenue recognition and automated billing. In turn, payment information and project status updates from NetSuite are reflected in Salesforce to give everybody full visibility.

Full Visibility Without Unproductive Time

In another project, we performed an integration to help a distribution company manage inventory levels and subscription invoicing more easily. Managers were resigned to their disconnected systems and relied on spreadsheets to see their data.

In Salesforce, the reps can now create new quotes from upsell opportunities and new leads. They consider customers’ inventory levels as well as channel partner sales. We created free-flowing data streams between Salesforce and NetSuite for several important areas:

• Subscription start and end dates
• Renewals
• Inventory demand
• Upsell proposals
• Field-service requirements
• Shipping status

People promptly found it easier to review information. They no longer need to spend time searching for data in multiple systems in order to keep their spreadsheets updated.

Taking the Next Steps

After Sikich has completed your NetSuite and Salesforce integration, your team can continue to manage the technology environment. Alternatively, you can contract with us to do so, or we can provide support for specific concerns. We have performed many NetSuite and Salesforce deployments and integrations, gaining a wealth of expertise that is not commonly present in corporate IT teams. We can make modifications in data flows or processes supported by the integrated solutions without needless complications and unwanted side effects.

Ready to begin? Contact one of our experts today!

• Integrating NetSuite and Salesforce Instead of Running Them as Two Disparate Systems
• Improving Processes with NetSuite and Salesforce Integration