NetSuite And Salesforce Integrations: The Ultimate Guide

Salesforce is regarded as the market leader in CRM software for managing leads, sales data, accounts, marketing initiatives, and more. Similar to this, NetSuite is regarded as one of the most well-known ERPs, managing all activities linked to accounts, including inventory management and invoicing. Because these two platforms provide organizations with ready-made solutions, many businesses want to use both well-known platforms simultaneously. Due to this escalating need, the NetSuite/Salesforce connection is now a possibility.

Unquestionably, about three out of five businesses in the world use NetSuite ERP and Salesforce CRM, two of the top SaaS suppliers. Thus, integrating NetSuite and Salesforce is one of the best moves a company can make because doing so will ultimately increase the effectiveness of sales and accounting.

Enterprises frequently encounter difficulties while integrating NetSuite and Salesforce. We created this blog to assist you with NetSuite and Salesforce integration. It will instruct you on the advantages of integrating NetSuite with Salesforce as well as how to do it.

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What Is NetSuite?

NetSuite is a software company that has developed a cloud-based business management platform used by more than 32,000 fast-growing organizations across the globe. This platform comprises a number of tools that firms may use to manage their operations, analyze their financial performance, and achieve high cost and efficiency reductions.

The ERP system of the business controls key operations like finance and accounting, inventories, orders, and procurement. Customers can add options like professional services automation (PSA) to plan and track projects, omnichannel commerce for both online and in-store sales, and human resources (HR) for employee data, performance management, and payroll. These modules all utilize the same database. Information from all throughout the system changes in real-time and is available to authorized users across business functions thanks to that one data source.

This gives executives a 360-degree perspective of the company in real-time, enabling them to identify which departments or procedures are performing well and which require improvement.

Customers of NetSuite pay a subscription fee to access the technology, but they are not responsible for any system maintenance or underlying infrastructures, such as purchasing and configuring servers, setting up software, or testing and deploying patches and upgrades. Instead, NetSuite uses the software as a service (SaaS) model. With two new software updates each year, Oracle NetSuite takes care of all of that for clients.

Eliminating the maintenance and upgrade costs that come with on-premises solutions not only saves money but also frees employees to focus on the company's mission and serve customers.

Scalability is another benefit of the SaaS model: Companies can add functionality as needed without worrying about infrastructure or staffing levels. For instance, after deciding to start selling products online, a B2B manufacturer might add the NetSuite e-commerce module.

In the end, NetSuite offers insight and control to businesses through a single source of real-time data and the flexibility to add modules instantly. They become more effective and agile as a result.

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How Does It Work?

All NetSuite solutions are delivered through the cloud in a subscription model. NetSuite was a cloud pioneer and remains fully committed to that deployment model — it does not offer any on-premises options.

You may run your complete firm using the cloud-based business management platform from NetSuite, which offers a variety of applications. This platform can be used for a variety of business modules.

Because it is a multi-tenant cloud solution, every customer uses the same version of the software and the same back-end infrastructure and gets automatic updates on a regular basis. Data from every consumer is kept separate and safeguarded. Because everything uses the same code, this generates economies of scale.

Users can, for instance, access all business models via a single sign-in portal. Departments can customize dashboards with metrics, charts, graphs, reminders, and shortcuts using drag-and-drop tools. Each module has access to a shared database where data from the entire system is updated in real-time and available to departments performing various business operations. In order to determine which areas are thriving and which require more attention, your organization will now have a 360-degree picture of the entire business.

Users can safely access the platform from any device, including a laptop, smartphone, or tablet, using a browser. Decision-makers now have the freedom to monitor the operation of their company from anywhere as long as they have an internet connection and may be informed of any issues.

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What Is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a provider of software as a service (SaaS), which means that it houses applications that users can access online. It uses a subscription pay-as-you-go business model. All data and information are kept in the cloud, making Salesforce available at all times from any device. Additionally, it enables accurate real-time updates and live data tracking.

Here's how Salesforce functions: It focuses on client relationship management (CRM). 

As you might expect, CRM software aids businesses in improving communication with both present and potential clients. The software has the capacity to pinpoint the top leads for a business and even offers recommended actions and next steps. Salesforce's features go beyond attracting new consumers; they also aim to maintain customer satisfaction, which fosters brand loyalty.

Although there are alternative CRMs available, Salesforce is quickly taking over as the industry standard. It provides a wide range of services that enable companies to interact with their customers in ways that go beyond the obvious.

Thousands of ready-made applications with Salesforce integration are available on the Salesforce App Exchange. For instance, the program PowerSync synchronizes data between the eCommerce platform Magento and the CRM Salesforce, removing the need for duplicate manual data entry.

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How Does It Work?

Salesforce enables your teams from different departments to find all the necessary customer data because it is a cloud-based CRM system. What does Salesforce do in this scenario? Here, it is utilized to develop a bond between the team members in order to improve user experience and boost revenue for your business.

Let's examine a Salesforce usage illustration. To analyze and plan advertisements, promotions, and other customer contacts, the marketing department makes use of CRM. The IT and financial teams can also view the data and modify your system based on the facts. All of this is done to increase the profitability of your company.

How Does Salesforce Work With Cloud Services?

Salesforce provides a variety of cloud platforms for certain specific uses. Here is a short explanation of what Salesforce does:

• Resources for sales, marketing, and customer support are available in the Sales Cloud. In both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) settings, it enables enterprises to offer customers individualized shopping experiences.

• Businesses can communicate with customers through the appropriate channels at the appropriate moments, thanks to the Marketing Cloud. Based on each user's unique interests, online habits, and other characteristics, the platform creates custom content for them. The information may be gathered via a person's interactions on social media, buying habits, and other sources.

• Businesses can engage with data more easily because of the Analytics Cloud, also known as Einstein Sales Analytics, which eventually leads to more deals being closed. Simple data visualization tools enable businesses to do a variety of things, like identify trends, seize opportunities, and monitor team performance.

• The Salesforce Health Cloud is an industry-specific solution that supports practices and hospitals in improving operational effectiveness and patient outcomes.

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Why Should I Consider Salesforce NetSuite Integration?

The combination of an organization's ERP and CRM technologies can have various benefits. Organizations can improve their sales and marketing operations by integrating their CRM and ERP systems. By integrating solutions, you can:

• Synchronize data across your organization.
• Avoid silos of data.
• Give your sales staff all the information they need in one place. This will allow them to take better advantage of your lead generation efforts.
• Eliminate manual data entries, thereby removing potential errors.

When information is shared throughout your company, you have the knowledge required to make more informed business decisions.

The NetSuite product suite includes both ERP and CRM functionality. Why would you combine NetSuite with Salesforce if it already has CRM features? An ERP system incorporating CRM features is called NetSuite. When compared to best-of-breed CRM solutions like Salesforce CRM, some businesses may find its CRM offering to be somewhat limiting.

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Benefits Of Integrating Salesforce With NetSuite

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Data Accuracy And Valuable Client Information

In order to satisfy customer wants and make significant company strategy pivots, reliable data is essential. Data accuracy is very important when looking at finances and accounts; businesses should be able to trust the numbers that are being recorded in NetSuite and Salesforce. It is challenging to determine whether either instrument is accurate when the data in two crucial systems don't match.

Businesses can guarantee that data is accurate throughout the board by eliminating manual data entry and combining NetSuite's accounting software with Salesforce's CRM. By combining the two systems, procedures can be automated and made more efficient. Businesses may easily keep better track of their customers swiftly and efficiently with more readily available client information. As a result, they will be able to obtain the information they need to provide for their consumers more effectively and will be far less likely to make mistakes.

Customer data that is scalable can also be provided by the two software solutions combined. A company may be able to promote more effectively by obtaining information on previous and present clients. They will be able to develop and grow as a result.

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Complete Visibility With Reports And Dashboards

Users can simply build reports and dashboards from their data using Salesforce's powerful native reporting features and NetSuite's financial data, giving them access to insightful information in real time.

Excel spreadsheets have historically been used by many financial teams to perform their forecasting and data monitoring tasks, which necessitates the export of data from numerous sources. Not only does this take a lot of time, but it is also very possible that there will be mistakes made by humans when the manual procedure is being done. To guarantee data accuracy, this procedure is automated by combining NetSuite and Salesforce.

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Better Alignment And Increased Team Productivity

Alignment across all departments and the entire organization is essential for firms to succeed. While developing processes and predictions, the sales and finance teams must set up an efficient workflow. One of the key advantages of the two platforms is that they will increase team productivity, compatibility, and cash flow efficiency.

For instance, sales teams can quickly assess the status of invoices to make choices regarding opportunities and accounts by integrating the ERP and CRM software. Since the data is easily accessible within Salesforce, the sales team can save time by accessing it directly without using NetSuite or contacting the finance team.

Similar to the sales team, the finance team can lessen the number of times that team members need to interact with one another to inquire about updates on invoices and sales orders. The program will quickly record each sale so the business may know precisely when and whether they have been paid. Departments will be able to better manage their financial flow as a result. Simply said, teams are given a more complete platform for improved cooperation by integrating both systems.

Choosing The Best Salesforce & NetSuite Integration Option For Me

How To Integrate Salesforce With NetSuite

If you are considering whether to build a customized integration or adopt an out-of-the-box solution to sync your NetSuite and Salesforce accounts, you'll need to consider the amount of time and resources needed for building the integration, as well as how much control you want. 

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Custom Build Solution From The Ground Up

‍Building a custom solution enables businesses to map out the exact capabilities and functionalities they want in their system. At Capella, we believe that better data informs us to make better decisions, which is why we work to build your custom data integration quickly and easily to integrate any type of data. 

This means that any data from Salesforce to NetSuite is integrated to better unify your platform, eliminate data silos, and improve your overall data quality. The custom aspect of this process gives you the authority and guidance to unify your platform as you see fit. As your partner through the entire process, the goal is to heighten the value of your data, while eliminating duplicates so that it all flows automatically. 

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Pros

This strategy is excellent for companies who are aware of the intricacies of NetSuite and have specialized needs while still having total control over the integration.

One more benefit of creating a connector between Salesforce and NetSuite is that, although money must be paid initially for its development, organizations can avoid the continuous expenses of monthly/annual membership prices.

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Cons

While having its advantages, custom software also requires a lot of planning and programming effort. It is simple to make it into a lengthy project that takes several months. 

This implies that a company would have to either a) spend more money on new recruits for the project or b) use their present team of engineers, which would involve taking them off of other projects and incurring delays.

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When creating your connector, keep in mind that there is a chance that the code could become buggy or possibly stop working altogether. To ensure functioning and productivity, your developers must regularly maintain and watch over the connector.

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Third-Party Integration Solution

One well-liked approach to integrating Salesforce and NetSuite is through third-party integrations. You can link your Salesforce and NetSuite accounts using a number of technologies, including Celigo, Breadwinner, and Boomi.

For instance, Breadwinner is an integration tool that installs quickly on the AppExchange and offers bi-directional syncing between NetSuite and Salesforce while residing inside of your Salesforce instance.

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Pros

Due to Breadwinner's pre-built custom objects that replicate data in NetSuite, you may link your account and match your NetSuite companies to your Salesforce accounts with little configuration using this out-of-the-box solution. This makes it possible for you to create sales orders, invoices, and receipts directly inside Salesforce.

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Cons

This might not be the ideal choice for you if your surroundings are really complex. If you have unusual requirements, a custom-built connector would be a better choice. However, Breadwinner has expertise working with clients who need more customization and has been able to add some extra development to meet their demands.

Understanding your company's objectives and requirements is crucial whether you choose to construct a bespoke connector or go with a third-party solution. Even while a custom solution might meet all of your needs exactly, it would be quite time and money-consuming to create. Therefore, if you want a strong NetSuite and Salesforce integration that will require fewer resources to install and configure, a third-party solution might be the most appropriate.

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Example Of Salesforce Netsuite Integrations Options

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iPaas

Using a cloud-based connection provider like Boomi or Celigo, which both provide connectors for these two apps, is one option to merge NetSuite and Salesforce. These highly flexible services link a wide range of workplace software and allow data to be mixed or changed as it goes from one application to another.

This can be quite useful if you need to clean up your sales data before loading it into NetSuite or if you need to use a variety of data sources or endpoints. The drawback is that these kinds of cloud-based connectors typically require a significant upfront investment in a challenging configuration procedure in addition to continuing subscription charges and maintenance.

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Key benefit: Extremely flexible

Drawback: Lengthy and costly setup

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Breadwinner

Breadwinner, a native Salesforce application that can be installed and up and running in less than a day as opposed to taking weeks or months to scope out and install, offers a comparable but less complex method. Boomi and Celigo connect a wide range of applications, but Breadwinner concentrates solely on integrating Salesforce with financial systems, resulting in a straightforward setup and an improved user experience.

Your staff can view current invoicing, billing, and payment records for your clients and vendors in Salesforce, along with information on products and pricing, right out of the box, thanks to Breadwinner's ability to mirror critical NetSuite data in real-time within Salesforce. Additionally, Breadwinner enables Salesforce users to raise invoices, sales orders, bills, and other documents directly in NetSuite.

Despite the fact that Breadwinner is simple to set up and configure, this simplicity is only feasible because Breadwinner does not link to the more than 100 tools that a general iPaaS platform might connect to. As a result, it might not be appropriate if your data needs to be cleaned up or merged with data from NetSuite and Salesforce.

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Key benefit: Fast setup, easy configuration

Drawback: Limited data-transformation tools

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RESTlet

The last option we'll talk about is creating your own Salesforce and NetSuite connection utilizing the respective platforms' APIs and a RESTlet web service. Of the three alternatives we've explored here, this one is unquestionably the most customizable because you write the code yourself and may design the connection as you choose!

However, keep in mind that combining two complicated systems like Salesforce and NetSuite won't be easy. Given the sensitivity of financial data, this technique will demand a significant upfront effort in developing and extensively testing your integration. Given how frequently Salesforce and NetSuite are updated, you'll also need to make a long-term commitment to maintaining your integration.

However, if none of the aforementioned options satisfy your particular needs and you're eager to begin writing code and eliminating bugs, take a look at this strategy.

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Key benefit: Completely customizable, no subscription costs

Drawbacks: Highly technically demanding, ongoing maintenance

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Final Thoughts

Integration between Salesforce and NetSuite builds a single link between two top cloud-native platforms. This means that you won't be constrained by a set number of fields that may be passed between the two as your business expands and changes, nor will you require a third party to rebuild an integration.

The communication between the sales and finance departments is substantially improved by this integration, which also enables businesses to keep existing Salesforce connections. A plug-and-play connector makes it simple to integrate two top programs using a best-of-breed strategy as more businesses use cloud-based services.

For additional information on NetSuite and Salesforce, check out the Capella Blog today. There we share our thoughts on design and the industry so you can be in the know!

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