FoxtrotOne Moves Data In SalesForce.com
7/24/09
Written by Aaron Bultman, Director of Operations
Recently, EnableSoft® decided to make the switch to the SalesForce™ online CRM application. We have used Maximizer™ as our CRM application for years which meant we had a staggering amount of information that needed to be ported over to the new system. Like any other organization that chooses to switch to a new core application, we were faced with the daunting task of moving hundreds of thousands of records from the old system to the new. The big question: How can we move the information to the new system quickly while maintaining the integrity of the data?
Those of you fortunate enough to have undergone a system conversion can remember the pain of actually making the move. The typical problems that arise are:
- Incorrectly mapping data between fields in both systems.
- Having to write custom code to apply business logic to the data being moved.
- Spending endless hours tracking down problems due to a lack of audit trails.
- Running over the time allotted for the conversion.
[I apologize if this list elicits a sudden and unwanted flashback...]
Knowing these challenges oh too well, we decided to use FoxtrotOne®, our flagship product, to handle the heavy lifting of our system conversion.
We exported the data out of the Maximizer CRM into a hand full of .CSV files. We loaded those files into FoxtrotOne, wrote a script to enter that information through the webpage of SalesForce.com just as a person would complete the task. Because the data was entered in through the front-end web pages (instead of shoving the data into the back-end database), all the data was formatted correctly. Audit trails were even maintained!
EnableSoft's critical client information was moved into SalesForce.com within a matter of days, NOT months. The EnableSoft staff was using SalesForce.com before the company's 30-day trial had even expired.
I received a friendly call from a SalesForce sales representative asking if we had any questions. He was floored to hear that our entire CRM database was already converted to their system. I explained how FoxtrotOne moved the data. He was not aware of that type of solution and put us in touch with their ISV Partner Program department - he believes many SalesForce users could benefit from our Foxtrot Data Scripting Technology. Apparently SalesForce signs up many new customers needing help with moving their data into SalesForce and other than their generic mass-import tools, they have little in the way of helping users move large amounts of data.
For those of you who are undergoing a conversion to SalesForce.com (or any other system conversion for that matter), know that sales force automation software can ease your troubles and deliver an "up-'n-running" system, fully populated with data, in a fraction of the time.
We think our solution can help with your system conversion while reducing conversion costs. If you would like to investigate how we may be able to help, send us your information by filling out the 'Contact Us' form on the right of this page.
Salesforce.com is a trademark of Salesforce.com, Inc., San Francisco, California. Other names used may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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Based on your assistance, I was able to successfully write a script that automatically logs a message when an error occurs without having to stop and restart the script manually for each record. Last week, this would have 'liberated' me from having to do so 104 times while the script was trying to run to completion. We will now be even more efficient with this process, plus I can incorporate my newfound knowledge to other scripts which may have similar scenarios in other areas of our bank. Thanks for setting aside some of your valuable time to follow up with my support question.
Ken Scharnagl, The Heritage Bank - AVP Research, Testing, Implementation
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