Customer success story
They moved the work to the system that was cheap to change
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development had a slow invoicing process in its ERP, and changing anything in that ERP was expensive. Rather than pay to fix it there, they moved the process into Salesforce and let the integration post the results back into Dynamics NAV. The finance record stayed where it belongs; the work moved to where it was cheap to change.
WBCSD is a CEO-led global organisation of over 200 leading businesses, based in Geneva, working to accelerate the transition to a sustainable world; its member companies represent a combined revenue of more than US$8.5 trillion and around 19 million employees. It runs Salesforce for member and customer relationships, financial reporting and events, and Microsoft Dynamics NAV as its finance ERP. Rapidi has connected the two since 2015, moving customers, vendors, contacts, sales orders, posted sales invoices and general ledger entries in both directions.
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Why an NGO cares about data plumbing
WBCSD builds engagement across businesses worldwide through six work programmes, producing tools, guidance, case studies and education so companies can put Environmental, Social and Governance criteria into practice. The longer-term goal is to change how the financial system rewards sustainable companies.
None of that is a data-integration problem on its face. It becomes one the moment you notice that all of it runs on member relationships, events, invoices and reporting — and that an organisation spending staff hours reconciling two databases is not spending them on its mission.
The sustainability agenda is becoming increasingly complex — it’s no longer just about emissions reductions, reputation or jobs. Rather, it’s about all these aspects at the same time. Business must take a leading role in the transformations that our key economic systems will go through.
Mahdi Sbeiti, manager of information and communication technologies at WBCSD, describes the requirement simply: a system that could move data from one system to the other, seamlessly.
Depth, then ease
The two systems were already chosen. Salesforce was picked for its ease of use and how far it could be customised — “we use Salesforce for our customer and member relationship, but also for financial reporting and events management amongst other uses,” Sbeiti says — with Dynamics NAV as the finance ERP. What remained was finding something to join them, and the shortlist came down to one criterion first and a second one after.
Rapidi was the only solution we found with deep enough integration capabilities between our CRM and our Financial ERP. Rapidi is very easy to use. Its online platform gives users the ability to integrate any objects and fields within minutes.
Depth first, because a shallow connector fails on exactly the objects that matter. Ease second, because the people maintaining it are not integration specialists. Both together are what let a small technology team add a field without opening a project.
What moves, and both ways
Rapidi synchronises customers, vendors and contacts, plus sales orders and posted sales invoices, in both directions between Salesforce and NAV.
“It works very well and we are able to transfer data from Salesforce to NAV, and NAV to Salesforce,” Sbeiti says. The practical effect is a rebalancing of where the work happens: “We are now able to do some of the heavy work on Salesforce and let the integration copy everything we need on NAV. It has considerably reduced some amount of our work and has increased efficiency.”
General ledger entries are copied into Salesforce as well, which is what makes the reporting side work. Salesforce’s reporting on top of the ERP’s financial data gives management and staff a clear picture without anybody exporting anything.
The invoicing decision
The clearest example is the invoicing flow, and it is worth reading as a design pattern rather than a feature.
WBCSD creates and sends sales orders from Salesforce. When a customer accepts the order, Salesforce sends the invoice to the customer and books it in NAV. The accounting record still lands in the ERP; the process around it does not run there.
The reason is cost, and Sbeiti is direct about it: the old process in NAV was very slow, and any changes they wanted to make in NAV were very costly compared with Salesforce. Faced with an expensive-to-modify system of record and a cheap-to-modify system of engagement, they put the changeable part in the changeable place. The integration is what makes that split safe.
Take it with you
The whole story as a PDF
The invoicing flow written out as a pattern, and what has held since 2015.
Support, and the recommendation
Robust technology still needs somebody to answer when it does not behave.
“Rapidi’s support team is great and very responsive,” Sbeiti says. “Training is not needed for any technical person, as long as you know how to navigate around their online platform.”
If anyone needs to integrate data between Salesforce and Dynamics, I would highly recommend Rapidi. The system works very well and is very easy to implement.
The integration has been running since 2015, which is the part of the story that a launch-day quote cannot tell you.
WBCSD is a global, CEO-led organisation of over 200 leading businesses working to accelerate the transition to a sustainable world, helping member companies become more successful and sustainable by focusing on the maximum positive impact for shareholders, the environment and society. Through a global network of almost 70 national business councils, its members have unparalleled reach, working along and across value chains. More about the organisation at wbcsd.org.
Is your ERP expensive to change?
Then stop changing it. Tell us which process is slow and where the record has to end up, and we will show you the split.