Customer success story
The integration that made Salesforce worth buying
Sacha Rose had already bought Microsoft Dynamics NAV. He had spent a long time looking at Salesforce and liked the idea, but could not see how it would earn its place. Rapidi was the piece that changed the arithmetic — and two days after signing up for a trial, his invoices were inside Salesforce.
Derek Rose is a British maker of luxury nightwear — men’s and ladies’ pyjamas, dressing gowns, nightshirts, loungewear and boxer shorts — exporting over two thirds of its night wear to the finest boutiques and department stores from Norway to Australia and Hong Kong to Argentina, on trade partnerships built with its customers over the past 30 years. Rapidi connects Microsoft Dynamics NAV to Salesforce: customers, products, outstanding orders with status, invoices and credit notes all flow across. Custom fields — colour, pattern, model, buying season, fabric type — travel on every invoice line, which is what makes industry-specific reporting possible inside Salesforce.
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That is amazing! This completely changes the viability of Salesforce. Thank you!
The business need
The starting point was an ERP purchase. Derek Rose had bought Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and Sacha Rose, the company’s Managing Director, was separately researching Salesforce — at length, and without reaching a conclusion.
“Back then I could see the benefits of having that system and I liked the idea of software-as-a-service,” he says, “but I could not see how we could make it work for us.”
What he had not yet named was the actual problem. “The funny thing was that I didn’t realise that I had a need for integration, before I came across Rapidi. Having one accounting system and another system for your customer relations are not useful to a company. In order to gain an overview from a business perspective you need to bind the systems together.”
Salesforce should thank Rapidi for making it clear for prospecting Salesforce customers that Salesforce is the right CRM system. I wouldn’t have become a Salesforce customer without Rapidi.
The key challenges
- Reporting on Microsoft Dynamics NAV data from inside Salesforce
- Access to up-to-date data anywhere, at any time
- A genuine overview of the business
- Staying competitive, and increasing revenue
Reporting was the sharp end of it. Doing it in NAV alone meant greater complexity and cost; doing it in Salesforce meant the NAV data had to be there in the first place.
The solution
A populated system from day one. Rapidi first copied all product and customer information into Salesforce, so Derek Rose started with useful data rather than an empty CRM. An Excel import would have been slower and messier.
Deep visibility on what has been sold. Seeing the pipeline of orders matters in this business, so all outstanding orders travel across with their status and product information. Customer records in NAV are integrated with Salesforce accounts, and every sale, invoice and credit note is transferred.
Reports that speak the industry’s language. Custom fields — colour, pattern, model, buying season, fabric type — are carried on each invoice line. That is the detail a nightwear business actually reports on, and without it a generic CRM report says very little.
Mobile access without a mobile project. With the data inside Salesforce, Derek Rose got mobile access to its key business data through Salesforce’s own mobile solution. The alternative was a web portal in front of NAV, which would have meant additional licences, extra servers, and a development and installation project to go with them.
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The whole story as a PDF
Six pages: the systems, what travels across, the reports it made possible, and Sacha Rose in his own words. Yours after one short form.
The results
With NAV and Salesforce linked, Sacha Rose can see account, contact and invoice data in reports and dashboards that tell him how the business is performing. Key metrics arrive by email daily.
The mobility is the part he keeps coming back to. “Being able to make reports of my sales related data in combination with having access to these reports on my iPhone give me the flexibility and mobility I need to run my business more efficiently. Now I’m able to give my customers the right and up-to-date information they need, even when I’m out at the customer itself. I just have a look on my mobile and the information is there.”
Using Salesforce to get mobile access to all our key business data turned out to be the most cost-effective mobile solution.
I appreciate the availability of Rapidi’s service. The solution is easy to use and the service and the support is there!
Up and running in no time
The implementation is unusual in this collection for how short it was. “It’s amazing how quickly I was up and running with the integration and already seeing clear results for my business processes,” Rose reports. “Two days after signing up for a trial I had all my invoices inside Salesforce and I was able to start building useful reports and dashboards based on my business information. In just about a week we had everything up and running.”
He sets up most of it himself, with little support needed from the Rapidi team, and he is direct about why he trusted the product enough to try: the consultancy came before the invoice. “It was important to have Michael’s involvement in the process. He gave me a sense of confidence in the product and the solution as a whole. The consultancy of Rapidi made it clear that it was the right solution for us. With Michael’s patience and confidence about the product I felt I was in good hands without feeling any pressure about a financial investment right away. His first priority was to help me as a customer to get the integration to work according to my needs and wishes.”
It’s easier and quicker to develop in Salesforce with Rapidi than in Microsoft Dynamics NAV, which makes everything also more economical.
What he wants next is more of the same: every sales agent worldwide connected to the system, with placed and confirmed customer orders flowing on to the other systems.
Wondering whether a CRM will earn its place?
Tell us what your ERP holds and what you need to report on, and we will tell you whether a standard Rapidi template covers you.