10 million. That’s how many AppExchange installations Salesforce celebrated last year.
That’s a lot of integrations… and it got us wondering– who’s monitoring them to ensure they are performing as expected?
Our first hunch? It’s either falling on the shoulders of your business systems leader or in many instances, your admin. And let’s be honest… between fixing breaks, building Flows, managing GTM teams, and generating revenue reports, does your admin really have time to manage integrations too?
Considering integrations are accessing data and automating processes within your org, it’s mission-critical these connections are working as expected. The stability, auditability, and security of your data rely on it. Not to mention the sanity of your admins who already have enough pressure on their shoulders.
That’s where having a dedicated Salesforce Integration User will help your RevOps team thrive. Here’s everything you need to know.
What is a Salesforce Integration User?
You can think of them as your Salesforce Admin’s co-captain, taking on the necessary tasks to run a tight ship by reducing risk and improving productivity. Your Salesforce Integration User is the channel used to communicate data between your Salesforce and the system you’re integrating into your system.
It serves as a dedicated full Salesforce license with its own Permission Set and Profile to ensure all 3rd party integrations are secure and auditable. Integration users can also move data in and out of your instance without requiring a real user’s Salesforce license.
What Does a Salesforce Integration User Do?
Running your organization requires several business systems and processes working together and communicating data back and forth. Your Salesforce Integration User is the vital link between each of them to make up your unique tech stack.
Why do admins love them? When Salesforce Integration Users take on the workload of managing 3rd party integrations, they give your admins more time to complete other work that cannot be automated like determining user requirements and preferences.
Salesforce Integration Users are also responsible for updating several thousands of records every day, which is necessary to manage 3rd party integration tools like marketing automation, CTIs, lead routing tools, data enrichment tools, and custom API work.
6 Reasons Salesforce Integration Users Matter
Giving your admins more time to drive revenue-impacting initiatives forward isn’t the only reason having a dedicated Salesforce Integration User matters. Here are six additional ways Salesforce Integrations Users are essential for monitoring tech stack performance:
1. Provide visibility
Your Salesforce Integration User serves as your data’s single source of truth. This is because they offer a seamless way to manage all your 3rd party applications and integrations, allowing employees a blueprint to view data dependencies and understand how other systems connect with your Salesforce org.
This is beneficial in numerous ways:
- Admins can quickly identify problems within your Salesforce org and optimize performance accordingly.
- GTM teams gain more time for productivity in activities that require human interaction and can’t necessarily be automated or streamlined.
- Streamlines onboarding for new admins or external parties that need to understand your organization’s data clearly and quickly.
2. Streamline data consolidation
Salesforce Integration Users help to consolidate data from multiple business-critical systems into a single location. When done correctly, this improves your data quality with automated processes that reduce errors and increase productivity. Whether you need to import external data into Salesforce or export Salesforce data into other systems, all teams can easily access data, driving your overall company operations.
3. Enable process automation
Demand for automation in business processes is only increasing. In fact, Gartner states by the end of 2023, organizations will be empowered to run up to 25% of tasks more autonomously. Your Salesforce Integration User can automate report generation from every integration in your tech stack, reducing human errors and giving time back to employees.
Both your customers and employees will continue to expect more automated processes, and you have to be able to deliver if you want to compete. On one hand, customers expect processes to be done as quickly as possible. On the other hand, employees expect the best quality business process improvements from their employers. As you can see, automation leads to both higher customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction.
4. Improve efficiency
The entire purpose of integrating business systems into your org is to streamline efficiency. Integrations allow your Salesforce org to be the centralized hub documenting all sales, marketing efforts and customer interactions across a multitude of tools. Your integration users play an integral role in ensuring these connected systems are living up to their full ROI potential.
Additionally, integrations will enhance visibility, data consolidation, and automation, naturally leading to improved efficiency in business operations. Your admins will require less time defining and searching for data, performing analyses, and making decisions to complete tasks– and bring in more revenue!
Gone are the days of waiting for one piece of data before moving on to the next. Your Salesforce Integration User makes it possible to gather every piece of data you need in one quick sweep!
5. Enhance decision-making
Your Salesforce Integration User provides Business Systems leadership with a full picture of your organization’s tech stack. With access to every system and piece of data, you can analyze the downstream impact of changes and updates before they happen. As silly as it may seem, orgs often lose sight of just how important it is to make sense of your tech stack.
This understanding gives you the ability to weigh your pros and cons, then confidently make the best decisions for your business.
6. Mitigate data privacy risks
Multiple access points to your data may result in a greater risk of data tampering and theft. Warning: you should never allow your integrations to have complete Admin access in Salesforce. When you do this, you’re creating a very risky situation in today’s ever-growing compliance and regulatory landscape. Take all precautions necessary to protect your data!
Providing an integrated system with Admin access means it has the ability to:
- Create and delete users
- Log in as any user
- Delete records
- Create and assign new permission sets
- Reset user passwords
To mitigate risk, a 3rd party application should never be enabled to perform any of the actions listed above.
For this reason, you’ll need a Salesforce Integration User to confidently move data between systems without risk.
Conclusion: Mitigate Risks and Improve Productivity by Adding a Salesforce Integration User
Having a Salesforce Integration User is an absolute game-changer when it comes to monitoring your org’s tech stack today– and your Salesforce admins will thank you for it! Consider adding this to your business processes to provide visibility, streamline data consolidation, enable process automation, improve efficiency, and enhance decision-making.
When you integrate with Sonar, you give your admin team a complete blueprint for managing changes in Salesforce. If you want your teams to benefit from:
- Redesigning processes with no stress
- Making changes without risking reporting
- Releasing new automations faster than ever