Salesforce NetSuite Integration Methods & Associated Advantages

One of the best CRMs – Salesforce and one of the best ERPs – NetSuite are two of the most commonly used applications across business sectors, embraced by thousands of companies worldwide. Salesforce is best for sales teams who use it for sales closing and analytical purposes, whereas NetSuite is best known for accounting, pricing, order control, resource planning, etc.

The need to integrate Salesforce & NetSuite

Despite sales and accounting being two different departments, both teams need to work collaboratively, sharing a lot of information including, prices, quotes, invoices, reservation of stock, and much more.

Using Salesforce and NetSuite individually might be great, but without them being interconnected, sales and accounting operations might experience errors and delays, reducing overall efficiency.

Let’s get into a little more depth by taking an example of the lead-to-cash process.

Lead-to-cash is one of the most important processes of a business. It begins with a prospect’s intentions to purchase and continues through to revenue realization. – Explained in the figure below.

The challenges businesses face while streamlining this process is that its important functions are divided into two different departments that (from start to finish) depend on each other to exchange crucial information. The process is fragmented between two different applications. – Explained in the figure below.

As a result, manual processes, like sharing information via spreadsheets or emails, usually cause errors, delays, or arise a lack of visibility.

In the figure below, these are the typical fields that move back and forth specifically for the lead-to-cash processes between the two software.

In case the lead-to-cash process is not automated or streamlined, it becomes time-consuming due to depending upon too many emails and entering data manually. Moreover, this may open room for errors, and then rectifying those errors needs time, causing delays.

Both sales and accounting teams face a lack of visibility throughout the process; the former deals with slow response times when getting back to prospects, while the latter lags in revenue recognition and accounting closure.

Therefore, there’s a sheer need to integrate Salesforce and NetSuite but before you go about that, it is important to understand the individual needs of each department. – Explained in the figure below.

Integration automates data updation, reducing the chances of costly errors, delays, and getting the staff free from manual work, all while enhancing the data visibility across departments. The best part is that both teams can continue using their unique native software while integration keeps the data updated in both.

Integrating Salesforce and NetSuite can be a great foundational change that many organizations prefer to put on top of their priorities in integration strategies. However, there are various methods they follow to integrate the two applications, some of which are discussed below.

Salesforce & NetSuite Integration Methods

Method 1: Starting with recipes & accelerators

You might have come across integration platforms that offer recipes and/or accelerators, helping you quickly start integration. Considering the compressive nature and uniqueness of Salesforce and NetSuite software, these tools can only be used to complete the initial phases of the integration process. Besides, they require vast technical knowledge of the platform, needing you to invest in technical resources for successful integration.

Method 2: Using custom-coded API integrations

A knowledgeable member of your IT staff can help you build your own core integration. Custom integrations via code and APIs can generate powerful integration results and are among the most preferred integration methods. But again, this requires technical expertise and long hours to build and implement. Moreover, things become challenging when it comes to integrating two highly-complex software like NetSuite and Salesforce.

Method 3: Using iPaaS-based integration applications

Integration applications are built and run on an iPaaS – Integration Platform as a Service. These applications come with a broad set of in-built integration workflows. Since these are built on iPaaS, they offer a strong platform that can be customized according to changing needs – something you would not find in other integration methods. The robust functionality makes it easy for you to build and implement integrations, for which you need not be a tech expert.

NetSuite Salesforce integration can bring multiple benefits, helping your business make the best use of both. Let’s now discuss some of the associated advantages.

Advantages of Salesforce-NetSuite Integration

1. Get a 360-degree view of customers

Customer behaviors and demands are changing fast, way faster than you analyze data. Customer demands might be different by the time you collate and analyze your customer data (using multiple data sets obtained from various sources) to identify patterns and trends.

Implementing Salesforce’s integration with NetSuite can help you streamline workflows, eliminate manual and repetitive tasks (such as data entry), and access important customer information in real-time. This will provide you with a 360-degree view of your customers.

A combination of Salesforce that manages customer engagement and NetSuite that manages billing, financials, and inventory can help drive business processes effectively with the customer-centric approach you need in today’s competitive business environment.

2. The leads-to-cash process gets faster

There’s a lot your workforce deals with, starting from the initial customer dealing to earning revenue. If your company follows a traditional method for this process, converting a prospect into a paying customer requires a massive amount of information and time. Due to this, other related processes get delayed.

Using a suitable NetSuite Salesforce connector, integrating both can result in;

• Streamlined sales tracking and purchase lifecycle management
• Establishment of synchronization between marketing and sales

With this, you can speed up your company’s leads-to-cash process leading to higher revenues and increased profits within a defined period.

3. Higher team productivity

Using NetSuite to generate financial statements, monitor expenditure, close monthly books, and manage revenue is fine. What’s more, it can be integrated with other applications like Salesforce that manages orders, inventory, and other commerce and/or e-commerce operations.

Integration helps Salesforce empower NetSuite and vice versa, enabling you to have a compressive set of information on your company’s financial and overall performance.

When both are interconnected, your teams can work collaboratively more easily. For example, your employees across marketing, customer support, and supply chain departments can interact efficiently and exchange the latest information that is regularly getting updated, such as completed orders, available inventory, customer acquisition and journey, etc. This can be greatly helpful in improving your workforce’s and company’s overall efficiency and productivity.

4. Generate accurate reports faster

Many finance teams use traditional methods for data capturing, for which they use several sources such as spreadsheets. However, checking that data for accuracy and then putting it into other sheets manually for forecasting purposes takes a lot of time. In addition to that, this method is often prone to errors.

With NetSuite Salesforce Integration, you can automate data collection, reconciliations, and other related tasks to produce accurate and valuable financials that you can use for budgeting. As data-related tasks can be automated and integrated with Salesforce, it can act as a powerful tool for generating dependable reports that deliver rich insights in real-time.

5. Real-Time Data Updation

For any business, data is the need of the hour; from assessments to future planning, a lot depends upon the data you have. Considering its importance, it is crucial to update your data from time to time.

Depending upon the nature of your business processes, you most probably generate, acquire, consolidate, and manage large-size data sets daily. Moreover, you must ensure each collection of data is being monitored and updated immediately so that it can serve its purposes – supporting your decision-making. In this aspect, traditional data entry might be proven inefficient due to being tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone, affecting other related business functions.

Therefore, many companies prefer to integrate NetSuite and Salesforce to handle data and its updates. Integration helps automate data entry, data integration, and data updation tasks while minimizing errors, mistakes and maximizing data quality.

6. Maximize Overall Results

Your ERP – NetSuite helps you manage crucial business operations in one platform, helping you optimize processes and streamline information across your company. Your CRM – Salesforce enables you to store and handle potential, current, and previous customers’ information such as contact details, accounts, purchases, etc., in one central location. Now imagine what results you could get by integrating both.

The integration can give you a comprehensive view of customers by bringing valuable financial data from NetSuite that can supplement sales-specific data and help you plan your company’s future accordingly. This can also enable your sales staff to deal with customers effectively as they are backed up by factual data about products, customers, sales, invoices, payments, etc.

Sales and accounting teams working hand in hand can streamline most operations, impacting your bottom line, ensuring you get desired results.

Final thoughts

When Salesforce gets integrated with NetSuite, it builds a fine bridge between the two cloud-based platforms, eliminating any limitations or restrictions you might have been facing without integration. Moreover, as your business grows and changes, you can implement the transition smoothly and on time as there would be clear and consistent communication and collaboration across departments of your firm.

However, all this is possible if you have the right people in place who can operate your NetSuite software efficiently. If your firm is not using NetSuite at its best due to a lack of resources, knowledge, or expertise, it is time to consider Cogneesol’s reliable and timely NetSuite accounting services. We are a team of skilled, experienced accounting professionals trained in using NetSuite effectively.

With our NetSuite accounting support, you can make the best use of the tools and features that come with your NetSuite subscription, meeting your business needs. On a bigger picture, your company can realize benefits such as greater accounting capacity, higher productivity, better transparency, lower costs, etc. – all that you need in order to make sound decisions for business growth.

To learn more about our services and pricing plans, call us today at +1 646-688-2821 or send an email to [email protected].