If you use Salesforce.com for your CRM, use Force.com for custom application development, and have SAP in your back-office, learn the 5 reasons why you need to integrate both systems.

1. Top 5 Reasons to Integrate SAP and Salesforce.com
Seamless Data Integration to Maximize ERP Business Value and ROI
Do your customer service and sales reps struggle to obtain a single view of customers?
Does your company’s finance department strive to recognize revenues on time? Would
you like to fulfill orders faster and ensure products ship on time?
“Informatica Cloud has changed
the way we use salesforce.com. It’s time to unlock the true business value of your ERP investment and get a better return
It has allowed us to easily on your data by integrating your back-office SAP environment with the social enterprise.
integrate SQL Server data from When SAP and salesforce.com are disconnected, employees often find themselves
our SAP software to Salesforce. trapped in tedious, manual tasks that are error-prone, slow down processes, and add to
Nightly updates, data imports and operational costs. Integrating SAP and Salesforce is essential to maximizing your
purges within Salesforce are investment in each system, reducing errors in data exchange, and improving overall
easily achieved with minimal organizational process efficiency. When combined with the flexibility and agility that the
effort. It is extremely versatile, Force.com platform delivers, synchronizing SAP with Salesforce eliminates fragmented,
supporting various file formats disconnected data and ensures all business stakeholders are working with timely, relevant
and the user interface is easy to and trustworthy information.
understand and manage. Of all of
the apps we have purchased and With over 15 years of experience working with hundreds of customers, Informatica has
tested, Informatica Cloud is the identified these top 5 reasons for integrating SAP with Salesforce CRM and Force.com:
best by far. It works very well.”
Reason #1: Get a Single View
– AppExchange Review In order to determine Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), there are many sources of data you
need to integrate to obtain a unified and accurate view of your most profitable customers.
Social information from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn may already integrate into your
Account and Case information in the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, but what about
integrating this information with the master data that is typically locked in back-office SAP
modules?
Fragmented data can result in sales reps being unable to take advantage of upselling
opportunities, and customer service reps failing to get to the root of a problem because
previous order history is not at their fingertips. Having many products should present
numerous cross-selling opportunities across several SKUs, but these opportunities are
“The Informatica platform is often missed because information is often not integrated with Salesforce CRM.
helping Nobel Biocare increase
productivity and make the Integrating social information with order status updates via Salesforce Chatter updates
organization more successful and has become a CRM best practice in the social enterprise. And unified and complete data
more profitable.” also ensures your marketing teams have the visibility and insight they need to analyze
customer segments, measure campaign effectiveness and help drive successful customer
loyalty programs.
Reason #2: Fulfill Orders in Real Time
When a new opportunity closes in Salesforce CRM, the associated order details must be
placed within the ERP system immediately. Trouble is, the employee that places the order
is typically not the sales or customer service rep, but rather someone in the procurement
or fulfillment department. The products on the sales order may be backordered or out of
Informatica Worldwide Headquarters, 100 Cardinal Way, Redwood City, California 94063, USA
phone: toll-free in the US: 1.800. 888.345.4639 www.InformaticaCloud.com
© 2012 Informatica Corporation. All rights reserved. Informatica and the Informatica logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Informatica Corporation in
the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other company and product names may be trade names or trademarks of their respective owners.

2. stock, or may experience delays in shipping. In some cases, a lack of real-time, event-
based communication between the CRM and ERP systems can result in the fulfillment
department missing a crucial order.
Meanwhile, this lack of visibility means your sales and customer service reps are also in
the dark, and customers grow increasingly frustrated and impatient when they are unable
to obtain order status information. In the era of Facebook and Twitter, customer attrition
“Integrating social and business data becomes a problem at internet speed and your competition is standing by to take your
gives you deeper customer insights, the orders.
ability to inform targeted marketing, and
a more complete view of marketing The right approach to integrating Salesforce with SAP will ensure that your entire
measurement.” opportunity-to-order process is optimized. When opportunities close in Salesforce,
automated messages are sent to the SAP system to initiate order processing, fulfillment,
– Forrester Research and shipping. This information is then relayed back to Salesforce CRM or a Force.com
application so that your sales and customer service reps, as well as customers have
complete visibility into the status of an order and any issues can be dealt with
immediately. It’s truly a closed loop process, driven by real-time data and process
integration. Your customers’ orders are fulfilled in a timely manner, and overall
satisfaction increases.
Reason #3: Accelerate Cash Flow
Many companies have a detailed process for cash collection that kicks off when a sale is
closed. Payment terms usually range from cash that’s due at the time of purchase, to a
30-to-60 day grace period. However, because your back-office ERP system contains
your customers’ financial and payment information and is disconnected from your CRM
system, which contains customer contact information, there are no workflows that send
automated notifications to your customers. As a result, cash which could be used to
further invest into the growth of your business remains uncollected.
With real-time notifications between your SAP Financial modules and the Salesforce
"Embrace social media, or be affected Social Enterprise, it is much easier to identify and notify any delinquent accounts in order
by it.” to collect what is due to your company. As a result, your finance department is also able
to recognize revenue sooner by achieving its monthly financial close faster.
– Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO,
salesforce.com Reason #4: Quote Correct Prices
For most organizations, the ERP system is your system of record and is therefore the
best source of information when it comes to pricing for your various product SKUs.
Complex products with multiple associated line items in SAP typically have numerous
prices attached to them, while fast-moving consumer goods have prices that change on
an almost daily basis.
When this information does not get synchronized with your CRM system, your customers
risk viewing the wrong list prices for your products. If prices have been reduced to match
or beat a new competitor in the market, the outdated higher price can drive potential
customers away, often for good if they perceive your products to be too expensive.
Conversely, if some of your products have been updated with brand new functionality
that the market has been eagerly seeking, having lower, outdated prices often sets a
“price ceiling” for your sales reps and makes it very difficult for them to negotiate the best
deal for your company.
Informatica Worldwide Headquarters, 100 Cardinal Way, Redwood City, California 94063, USA
phone: toll-free in the US: 1.800. 888.345.4639 www.InformaticaCloud.com
© 2012 Informatica Corporation. All rights reserved. Informatica and the Informatica logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Informatica Corporation in
the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other company and product names may be trade names or trademarks of their respective owners.

3. A related benefit of real-time pricing and product synchronization between Salesforce
and SAP is your ability to view and forecast the effect of price discounting on your profit
Informatica Cloud margins. You can take action more immediately to rectify the situation with new
SAP Customers discounting rules rather than much later, after your profit margins have suffered.
Reason #5: Maximize Force.com ROI
Force.com is a better way to build custom applications to make your business more agile
and social. It helps you streamline your business processes amongst different
departments and enhance collaboration within your enterprise through easy-to-use web
services, Chatter APIs, and mashups. Force.com can also be used to customize your
CRM environment by adding custom fields, lists, and other objects that send and receive
data from SAP.
However, when either your custom apps or custom objects don’t synchronize with
master data in your ERP system, you’re not deriving the full benefit of your platform as a
service (PaaS) investment since you’re not receiving mission critical financial, fulfilment,
pricing, and cost data. There are numerous ways to integrate with SAP, including Native
IDOCs, BAPIs, ABAP, BMI, BCI, and Web Services. Each connectivity option can be
used to leverage all the custom functionality your company has built using the Force.com
platform and make you even more efficient as a result. So go ahead and build a cloud-
based layer of agility around your ERP environment, but remember that to maximize
your overall return on data, it is essential to think through the right approach to data
integration.
Conclusion: The Cloud Integration Imperative
Salesforce CRM and the robust Force.com platform provides you with the tools to
acquire, service and retain new customers. But delivering on the promise of the social
enterprise, requires a comprehensive data integration and master data management
(MDM) strategy, where Salesforce is able to seamlessly interact with SAP, your system
of record. A comprehensive MDM strategy requires companies to unlock the core order
management and financial information in the ERP system and integrate it with customer
and social data in the CRM system. Doing so will truly enable your Finance, Marketing,
Sales, Customer Service, and Fulfilment departments to collaborate with each other
ensuring that they always have the right information at the right time. Informatica’s deep
expertise with data integration, data quality, and MDM will ensure you get the most out of
your salesforce.com and SAP investments and deliver on the promise of the social
enterprise.
About Informatica
Informatica Corporation (NASDAQ: INFA) is the world’s number one independent
provider of data integration software. Organizations around the world rely on
Informatica to gain a competitive advantage with timely, relevant and trustworthy data
for their top business imperatives. Worldwide, over 4,630 enterprises depend on
Informatica for data integration, data quality and big data solutions to access, integrate
and trust their information assets residing on-premise and in the Cloud. Informatica
Cloud has also been recognized as the #1 data integration solution on the
AppExchange 4 years in a row by salesforce.com customers. For more information,
call +: 1.888.345.4639 (in the U.S.), or visit www.InformaticaCloud.com.
Informatica Worldwide Headquarters, 100 Cardinal Way, Redwood City, California 94063, USA
phone: toll-free in the US: 1.800. 888.345.4639 www.InformaticaCloud.com
© 2012 Informatica Corporation. All rights reserved. Informatica and the Informatica logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Informatica Corporation in
the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other company and product names may be trade names or trademarks of their respective owners.