Salesforce Integration: Managing Hidden Costs
Salesforce has one of the lowest TCOs (Total Cost of Ownership) of all enterprise CRM platforms because of it’s multi-tenant cloud architecture, open APIs, and an ecosystem of Developers, System Administrators, and ISV AppExchange partners.
But Salesforce licensing costs are just the tip of the iceberg.
Just below the surface are Migration, Implementation, Administration, and Integration costs. Some costs are one-time. Some are recurring.
50%+ of costs are related to implementing and managing integrations to Salesforce.
The upside of these costs are broader marketing reach, faster sales cycles, and better customer service.
Salesforce provides all the tools necessary for an internal user to be instantly productive. But customer facing applications are add-ons, and the add-ons require both licenses and implementation services to integrate.
Customer-facing integrations are the “last mile” that fulfill a CRM systems full potential to manage the “customer relationship”.
All Salesforce orgs fundamentally require the same 5 customer-facing apps, regardless of industry or company size.
Top 5 Most Integrated Applications
- Documents. Dynamically generated and static.
- eSignatures
- Web forms
- Payments / entering credit cards
- Basic branding and content management
Purchasing and integrating these add-on features individually is where the costs start to add up. About 50% of the TCO is spent implementing and administering these integrations.
This TCO worksheet provides a framework for calculating your own TCO.
So what is the secret to reducing these integration costs?
Solution: Enter the DXP
Digital eXperience Platforms (DXP) evolved from customer portals and content management systems to support all customer-facing interactions from a single platform, and thus reducing the amount of integration effort involved.
Open DXPs, such as iDialogue from Pacific Apps, come with many best-of-breed services pre-integrated. Customers experience a simple branded and integrated view, and the DXP handles all the integrations in the background; including Stripe payments, Twilio SMS messages, PDF generation, eSignatures, and many more pre-integrated functions.
DXPs evolved during a mobile-first era, and as such are designed to interact with customers on any device.
DXP licensing tends to be based on volume or traffic rather than “per user”.
Implementing a DXP with CRM results in:
- Lower integration and licensing costs
- Sending more quotes per month
- Same day eSignatures and faster close times
- Collecting payments faster
- Onboarding customers quicker with fewer errors
Learn more about DXPs at www.GetPacificApps.com
