As more enterprises tap on Salesforce to run their business, challenges in integrating the cloud-based platform with legacy on-premise software are bound to occur.
According to a worldwide study by Progress Software, a maker of software development tools, 54 per cent of 200 Salesforce users from various industries indicated that application and data source integration is their most pressing issue.
Some 48 per cent said this was due to integration challenges around on-premise applications, followed by legacy applications (47%), connectivity (40%) and shared data sources (37%). Such integration difficulties resulted in slower Salesforce performance for 63 per cent of respondents.
Michael Benedict, president for data connectivity and integration at Progress, said with 89 per cent of respondents pursuing new Salesforce implementations over the next two years, data and application integration is and will remain hugely important.
And not surprisingly, he called for companies to seek out the proper tools, technologies and best practices, to leverage Salesforce in a more meaningful way.
In many ways, such data integration challenges are a direct result of Salesforce’s success in drawing organisations to its cloud services, with survey respondents indicating that Salesforce integrations are “spidering into a surprising variety of applications throughout the enterprise”.
These applications include support systems (46%), enterprise-resource planning, lead generation, marketing, shipping, licensing applications and more. Legacy applications account for 38 percent of all integrations. And, 12 percent of businesses surveyed have more than 10 applications and data sources connected to Salesforce currently.
Despite current challenges, the respondents noted that the benefits of Salesforce are plentiful. These range from ease-of-use to cost effectiveness to competitive advantage.
Some 56 per cent of respondents said Salesforce is intuitive and easy-to-use, while 48 percent said Salesforce increased the effectiveness of their sales teams.
When contacted, a Salesforce representative said the company is unable to comment on this story.
