How to Ingest Salesforce in 7 Steps

SF,White Paper

HOW TO INGEST SALESFORCE IN 7 STEPS MOVING SALESFORCE DATA TO THE VAULT

CRM IN THE DATA-DRIVEN ORGANIZATION Well designed CRM systems are goldmines for data-driven organizations. Over 35% of our webinar attendees agree that the CRM is where the most valuable data is found within their company. Modern tools make it easy to analyze data directly in the source system. Nonetheless, to unleash the full potential of your customer data slumbering in your CRM Systems, the data-driven decision-maker knows that the integration of customer data sets with other systems is a key driver for strategic reporting and operational sales process optimization. This guide will give you a kick-start on how to ingest Salesforce data to your Data Warehouse using Data Vault 2.0.

SUSTAINABLE ANALYTICS & DATA GOVERNANCE

With rising integration complexity, the need for data governance and sustainable analytics (and in more challenging cases auditable reporting results) grows rapidly. The time when you could share customer information on a flash drive is definitely over with the emergence of GDPR. No matter what the architecture at hand is

looking like: Traditional Batch Line, Lambda, Kappa, they all share the need for a well designed, well governed and agile Data Warehouse. A typical project plan might look something like this, if you want to integrate a CRM like Salesforce into a Data Vault:

STEP 1: FOCUS ON VALUE Given that you follow some form of an agile delivery cycle, (Scrum, Kanban, Lean, Disciplined Agile Delivery(DAD), Spotify, etc.), first a target needs to be defined. What data is missing in the current reporting that you can deliver with the integration of Sales- force? An example would be to add your contract data to the current financial report to add more details or drilldowns.

How to Ingest Salesforce in 7 Steps | © Scalefree International GmbH 2023

STEP 2: GETTING DATA FROM SALESFORCE You then need to define your data access style. Your API based options are: Option 1: REST API for Single Record integration with applications Option 2: Bulk API for Traditional ETL Operations Option 3: Streaming API for Event based data handling Make sure to keep your API limits in check! When you decide your method of getting the data you need to stage them.

STEP 3: STAGING SALESFORCE DATA IN S3 (DATA VAULT STYLE)

You may want to find a way to not use a relational stage to avoid all its caveats and reengineering cost. The current recommendation to keep it simple would be an object store like S3 and simple staging scripts (e.g. in Python) or the usage of Data Vault Automation Tools. (TODO Link Wheres- cape? Reference for Salesforce?)

STEP 4: METADATA DEFINITION

As your data is staged and ready to be loaded to your Data Vault, you need to think about the meta data and your derived data model. What Business Objects are relevant for your first sprint arti- fact?

How to Ingest Salesforce in 7 Steps | © Scalefree International GmbH 2023

STEP 5: LOADING SALESFORCE DATA INTO THE VAULT (HASHING & HARD RULES) One way to move data from S3 to a relational structure is to use an automation tool like dbt. This has the benefit of using templates for automated data loading. Before the data is inserted into the data warehouse, the automation tool applies required technical transformations and calculates the hashes needed. Afterwards, the data is loaded into the specific Raw Vault entities.

STEP 6: TYPICAL MODELING OBSTACLES AND SOLUTIONS

Data driven modeling is easy, especially if you did your homework when setting up Salesforce cor- rectly and with your Data Warehousing needs in mind. If not, you can always make use of a domain expert in Salesforce to plan and execute the necessary changes in your Salesforce Org. If you don’t have access to one, just give us a call.

STEP 7: BUSINESS RULES AND REPORTING

Now we have arrived at the hardest part, e from here everything might be different depending on what you are trying to accomplish with your integration in the first place. Here, our ways are most likely to differ for every customer and every integration because your very specific business needs are applied to make that one report your managers nagged you every day for the last quarter. The one where some columns were missing and the information was sitting very visible but in isolation in the big blue cloud CRM dashboard. Now with the business rules applied, you can build the infor- mation marts and deliver that wanted report. ALTERNATIVE STEP: WRITEBACKS Maybe you can even leverage the integration you just created to write useful information back to salesforce. Record mappings are a breeze as you can just do them in your Enterprise Data Ware- house now. In no time, you can create an interface mart, (that is what we call a mart used for write- backs to source systems at Scalefree), and deliver all the good data and data enrichment processes back to your CRM. Your salespeople will love those enriched accounts, I can tell you that.

IT’S YOUR TURN NOW! What is your favorite step during a Data Vault iteration? Which step is your nemesis?

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