Client Profile
This is one of our clients that provides HR solutions from small to mid-sized businesses. Their bundled HR products, Cloud applications and strategic services simplify your HR. Their HR products cover the core services of payroll, benefits, risk & compliance, an HR team and a cloud platform.
Challenges
The client was looking to leverage a salesforce CRM solution across multiple product lines. The goal was to create a unified solution that would work seamlessly across all their product lines. The support team needed to manage the account and contact data in salesforce while the payroll data was maintained in the back end systems. The challenges that our clients faced were
• Time-consuming challenge to integrate disparate back end systems
• No real time view of all the HR information
• Increasing call resolution time
• Usage of several applications to complete the task
• Disconnected data in DB2, PeopleSoft etc.
• Replication of data
• No data sync between systems
Solutions
Salesforce lightning connect helps by mapping various Salesforce external objects to the data tables of the alien system. Whenever you are looking for real time access of data and also want to stay away from replication , salesforce lightning is to be considered. It allows seamless integration of data across platforms. Lightning connect maps salesforce external objects to data tables in external systems. Instead of copying the data into the organization, lightning connect accesses the data on demand in real time. The data is never stale, and we access only what you need. Salesforce Lightning is always connected to the server, but only calls the server when necessary, which maximizes the program’s efficiency and diminishes lag time. Lightning connect is never complete without open data protocol. ODATA is an open protocol to allow the consumption of the Restful API’s.
Not using the lightning connect would require additional effort on the following
• IT review of integration to confirm compliance with data governance policies
• 3 times the Apex / Visualforce coding resources Technical design of integration and authorization
• Determine how to access internal resources via API
• Firewall changes by the network security team
• At least 3 full time resources and an additional resource for support. Future integrations will also be 3x more implementation costs
• Harder to test/validate
• Changes require additional technical design, code, & test
• More maintenance costs
• Harder to implement and a risk to our timelines
• Moves the complexity of integration more to middle tier rather than a tight coupling of salesforce and back end
Benefits of using Lightning connect:
• Intuitive Setup
• Ability to configure page layouts to include integrated related lists.
• Out of Box integration scenarios
o One integration built will work for multiple objects
o Referencing data from account and or Service Contracts
o Avoid data duplication and save on integration timeline and costs
If any further changes are needed:
• Design and add additional data to the data service much easier
• Better long term maintenance
• Keeps salesforce design intuitive and a huge saving on salesforce dev cost and maintenance.
Results
Our client now has a custom, unified solution that works across product lines. They are able to view the accurate real time data everywhere within salesforce without duplication of record. These improvements have enabled them to get better data visibility like they never did before, and accommodate changes in process and product offerings with less or no impact to their budget or timeline. They also gained the following advantages
• Lightning provides the best possible experience for the HR client sales team and can extend in the future as the company grows.
• The HR client is looking for a 100% user adoption for Lightning as it has increased productivity by 43% and efficiency by 36%.
• Empowering HR systems
• Syncing data with ease
• Providing an integrated user experience
• Improved customer satisfaction
• 360 Degree customer view