Accelerated sales with Oracle Cloud ERP and Salesforce integration

Salesforce and Oracle are the two most widely used software solutions for customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP), respectively. While both platforms have unique strengths, many businesses use both systems simultaneously to manage different operations. However, managing data and processes across two separate systems is often cumbersome and time-consuming and leads to data silos creating a need for their integration.

This article decodes the why, what, and how of Salesforce and Oracle Cloud ERP integration. 

Why must you integrate your Salesforce and Oracle Cloud ERP? 

Whether you're a small business or a large enterprise, integrating the Salesforce and Oracle Cloud ERP enables you to synchronize data for various touchpoints, including item pricing, customer accounts, and order-related details in real-time. It further accelerates the sales process and empowers sales representatives with insights to improve customer communications and support.  

Salesforce and Oracle Cloud ERP integration can help you in the following ways: 

• Streamlined Business Processes: It streamlines your business processes by automating the data flow between the two systems, reducing manual data entry, and improving data accuracy.
• Improved Customer Service: It provides you with a comprehensive customer data view, allowing you to provide more personalized and efficient customer service. For example, suppose a customer contacts your service team with a question about an order. In that case, they can quickly access the customer's order history and inventory data from Oracle Cloud ERP directly within Salesforce to resolve their queries.
• Increased Sales Efficiency: It gives your sales team accurate and up-to-date data on customers, orders, and inventory levels, allowing them to make more informed sales decisions. This further leads to increased sales efficiency and higher revenue.
• Better Data Analytics: It gives you a complete view of your business data, allowing you to make data-driven decisions. For example, you can use data analytics tools to analyze sales data from Salesforce and financial data from Oracle Cloud ERP for insights into your business operations and identify areas for improvement.

How to integrate Oracle Cloud ERP with Salesforce? 

Integrating Oracle Cloud ERP and Salesforce comprises two main parts: 

• Automating sales process to eliminate manual intervention between Oracle and Salesforce applications and speed up the Quote-to-Order cycle.
• Integrating applications to synchronize Oracle and Salesforce leads and eliminating communication gaps.

Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) provides several pre-built integrations for Oracle Cloud ERP and various Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems like Salesforce. Here's an overview of how you can integrate Salesforce CRM and Oracle Cloud ERP using Oracle Integration Cloud Middleware:

Configure connections: Configure connections in OIC to both Salesforce and Oracle Cloud ERP. This involves obtaining endpoint URLs, credentials, and other necessary information to connect both systems. You can use the pre-built adapters provided by OIC to create connections to these systems.

Create integrations: Use OIC's pre-built integrations or create custom integrations to integrate Salesforce and Oracle Cloud ERP. You can use the Salesforce adapter to identify changes in Salesforce records and the Oracle Cloud ERP adapter to create, update, or query the ERP records. You can further map the data between the systems using the integration mapper in OIC.

Handle errors and exceptions: Configure error handling in OIC to handle exceptions and errors that may occur during the integration process. You can define error-handling policies to ensure your integration is robust and reliable.

Test and deploy: Test your integration in a development environment, and once you’re satisfied with the results, deploy it to a production environment. OIC allows you to create separate development, testing, and production environments.

Monitor and manage: Monitor the performance of your integration in OIC's monitoring dashboard. You can configure alerts and notifications to be sent to the relevant person/group if there are any issues with the integration.

Common integration scenarios with Pre-built OIC Solutions

Here are some common integration scenarios that can be used as plug-and-play for fast Salesforce and Oracle Cloud ERP integration:

Account and customer sync: Synchronize account and customer data between Salesforce and Oracle Cloud ERP. This involves creating or updating customer records in Oracle Cloud ERP whenever a new account is created or updated in Salesforce. You can also synchronize order history and invoice data between the two systems to ensure that customer records are up to date in both systems.

Order and inventory management: Synchronize order and inventory data between Salesforce and Oracle Cloud ERP by creating and updating order records in Oracle Cloud ERP whenever a new order is created or updated in Salesforce.

Pricing and discount management: If your business relies on complex pricing and discount structures, consider integrating pricing and discount data between Salesforce and Oracle Cloud ERP. It involves synchronizing price books and discount structures between the two systems to ensure that pricing and discounts are consistent across both systems.

Financial management: If your business uses Oracle Cloud ERP for financial management, consider integrating financial data between Salesforce and Oracle Cloud ERP. It involves synchronizing invoice and payment data between the two systems to ensure that financial records are up to date in both systems.

HR management: If you use Oracle Cloud ERP for HR management, consider integrating HR data between Salesforce and Oracle Cloud ERP. It involves synchronizing employee records, payroll data, and other HR-related data between the two systems to ensure that employee records are up to date in both ERP and CRM systems.

What is the right integration approach for you?

Integrating Salesforce and Oracle Cloud ERP systems is cumbersome due to different systems' involvement, which can lead to difficulties in keeping common data points in sync. While the Salesforce CRM focuses on managing customer interactions, sales, and marketing activities, Oracle Cloud ERP manages back-office operations such as finance, supply chain management, and human resources. Due to these different focuses, CRM and ERP systems have different data models, structures, and processes, making integration challenging, especially when synchronizing common data points.

Whether you are using a prebuilt integration solution, a custom integration solution, or a middleware integration solution, it is important to have a clear understanding of the data and business processes that need to be integrated and to ensure that the integration solution is scalable, secure, and meets your compliance requirements.

Testing the integration solution thoroughly before deploying it in a production environment is also important. Having an estimated ROI so that the stakeholders are aware of the benefits of the integration process will further strengthen the integration efforts. And finally, onboarding a technology partner with experience in Salesforce and Oracle Cloud ERP integrations will bring in the required technical expertise to make your integration successful.