It’s essential for any business to manage its data and build lasting relations with its customers. However, with data constantly flowing through organizations, it can become quite a challenge, not to mention that the data kept should be easily accessible at all times for any team that needs it.
Customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools are two necessities that companies need to make business more productive and effective. Though Salesforce and NetSuite both offer CRM features, for a more sophisticated level of customer satisfaction, Salesforce CRM is a perfect choice. If you use it to the fullest, you’ll gain a much more powerful capability of providing a higher level of customer satisfaction.
The NetSuite to Salesforce integration is built to help with marketing automation efforts so businesses can better engage their customers.
This article provides an overview of core features offered by each product: Salesforce and NetSuite, and also covers how they can integrate. Use our step-by-step guide and learn how to get started with this powerful integration and how it can help your business grow.
Table of contents
- Advantages of NetSuite
- Advantages of Salesforce
- Benefits of Integration NetSuite with Salesforce
- NetSuite to Salesforce Integration using REST API
- Cloud Integration Salesforce and NetSuite
- Summary
- More articles about Salesforce integrations
Advantages of NetSuite
NetSuite is an ERP suite that streamlines all aspects of business operations, from sales to manufacturing, inventory to logistics, and finance to human resources. With its single, integrated view for managing everything, NetSuite ERP provides one powerful solution for every area of an organization’s business.
Key features
- Accounting. Receive a full view of cash flow and financial performance.
- Finance. Accelerate daily financial processes and transactions.
- Global business. Get real-time financial visibility across geographies and subsidiaries by managing global operations along various currencies and taxation rules.
- Inventory. Keep everything under control by automating and optimizing inventory management: reorders, safety stock, different locations, etc.
- Order processing. Avoid inefficiencies, reduce errors and streamline the order flow smoothly.
Advantages of Salesforce
Salesforce is the most widely used CRM solution for all kinds of businesses. It’s customizable so your business can adapt it to your company’s unique needs. The service offers a full range of features that provide an in-depth view of all customer interactions. Salesforce has a full marketing cloud, meaning you can have a single platform for all your marketing channels and customer relationships.
Key features
- Opportunity Management. Get a holistic picture of all key information for sale, including the stage, products, and other important details.
- Account management. The service tracks all customer interactions (via email, chat, and phone) for future reference.
- Easy-to-use interface. It has a drag-and-drop feature to automate business processes visually.
Benefits of Integration NetSuite with Salesforce
There are two business challenges to overcome, and they’re unchanged and similar to all data integrations:
- Manual data entry processes. Applying these processes increases the chance of mistakes, complicates communication, and builds up tension between teams. Accordingly, this leads to missed orders, revenue discrepancies, and lengthy period close.
- Lack of data visibility between departments. A popular example is when the sales team can’t see customer payments or other finance information leading to decreased customer satisfaction.
The NetSuite Salesforce integration meets these challenges and provides lots of business benefits. With this integration, you get all the data and reports needed in order to make informed decisions for the company.
- Data updating. Businesses need vast amounts of data to run effectively between various departments: sales, finance, marketing, support, etc. For instance, changes in Salesforce data or invoices should be reflected in the NetSuite accounting software and vice versa. It’s possible to update databases by using different methods. However, traditional data entry ways are time-consuming and inefficient. A mistake made while data processing may prevent a company from receiving its payments on time, thus delaying or halting the entire process. Thus, companies prefer the NetSuite Salesforce integration as a cost-effective practice to keep their data up to date as it’s a reliable automated solution that ensures data will run smoothly and quickly.
- Improved customer experience. No customer wants to wait for a long time to get the required information; otherwise, you’ll face resentment from customers. The NetSuite Salesforce integration reduces the time to connect with concerned customers affected by product services. If any query is raised by customers, then your customer support team doesn’t need to check multiple systems for information. The data is readily available for them and can reduce customer interaction time.
- Real-time inventory monitoring. If a customer orders a product online and later finds it unavailable in inventory, it diminishes the brand value and trust factors. NetSuite and Salesforce integration allows better inventory management and builds loyalty among customers because it helps customers avoid misleading transactions.
- Sales and finance team coordination. It’s essential for all companies to have strong sales and finance teams aligned around the same data and vision. The Salesforce and NetSuite integration improves business performance and provides a common platform for collaboration. Teams get more time to spend on growing business and less time worrying about balancing data.
- Fast report creation. With the Salesforce and NetSuite integration, it’s easy to create data reports/dashboards to receive insights into what’s happening with a business and deliver important reports in real-time.
NetSuite to Salesforce Integration using REST API
What do you need to know before configuring integration in this way? The main thing to remember is that the Netsuite REST API is relatively new, and many fields are still in beta. Check the documentation of the NetSuite REST API Browser to find out the latest updates.
Prerequisites
The NetSuite REST API services are available for those users who have enabled these features in their accounts. You can check the features in the top menu Setup / Enable features.
Users also need the required permissions assigned to the user role. You can use the following table to check the information about the required features and permissions.
Step 1. Configure and add RESTlet scripts on NetSuite
For each object to integrate between NetSuite and Salesforce, separate JS files should be created. After that, these JS files can be added to NetSuite, creating new fields/contacts.
Note! You must add new files for each new object you want to synchronize.
Step 2. Create an authentication in Salesforce
Data security and privacy are important issues for every type of data transfer or online transaction. No matter how much data is being transferred, any kind of it requires authentication and verification.
You can use the authentication with your NetSuite credentials or Salesforce to retrieve data from NetSuite. Either way is fine, but the preferred approach is usually to use Salesforce to retrieve data from NetSuite.
Step 3. Run Data load between Salesforce and NetSuite
Though the data sync process can be performed in real-time, batch processing is a better option. For data transferring between two systems, you must create separate web services accordingly, within Salesforce and NetSuite.
Note! Read how to use REST web service for custom record operations for more information.
This way of integration seems to be easy to use and convenient. However, it does have its limitations and is still in beta.
Cloud Integration Salesforce and NetSuite
Skyvia is an efficient way to get fast results out of your data. The service is an integrated platform that connects to local and cloud-based services, so you can build ETL, ELT, and reverse ETL solutions. With an array of data analysis capabilities, it’s designed to make the work you do easier, faster, and more effective.
The platform offers an excellent data service that any type of business can easily set up and integrate, as it’s 100% cloud-based and requires no maintenance. It scales the data load up or down in real-time as well as provides flexible price plans.
With Skyvia’s advanced Data Flow and Control Flow features, you can create and manage complex integration scenarios with many data sources and destinations. Overall, by using all of the automation features in Skyvia, customers receive fully automated and trouble-free data processes.
Key Skyvia advantages
- The platform provides rich functionality and more opportunities to implement complex integrations. The service implements more complex logic, applying parallel processing, error interception, etc.
- The interface is user-friendly and convenient. Business users can configure data flows visually as there’s a no-code wizard available.
- Skyvia’s approach has an advantage when it comes to debugging workflows. Since it’s a visual tool, users can observe the execution of the task in real-time, monitor the data count, and have detailed information about the errors.
- The service offers template scenarios with pre-made connectors for cloud-based, on-premise, or hybrid ecosystems.
- No deployment and installation are needed as the service is cloud-based and browser-based.
In this article, we show how to easily and quickly configure automated data integration (as a periodic update) between Salesforce and NetSuite with the help of Skyvia. Since the Skyvia platform is very flexible and has many capabilities, we demonstrate several possible scenarios for data integration: simple and advanced.
Business case description
Marketing, finance, sales, and support teams must work together to better target and segment customers and prospects. This allows businesses to reach those most likely to purchase or convert. The most popular objects in integrations are Accounts/Customers, Contacts, Opportunities, Quotes/Estimates, Products/Items, Orders/Sales Orders, Invoices, Credit Memos, and Payments.
Before implementing any integration scenarios: establish connections between the two services and Skyvia.
Note! You must create a Skyvia account if you don’t have one yet. You can also try Skyvia with a free trial version.
First, you need to create connections between Salesforce and Skyvia as well as between NetSuite and Skyvia. Sign in with Skyvia and click +NEW in the top menu, then click the Connection button on the left menu.
Select the service you want to connect on the opened page: NetSuite or Salesforce.
Note! The default name for a new connection is always Untitled, so don’t forget to rename it to prevent misunderstandings.
Sign in with the chosen service, enter credentials for your account, and create a connection. In the screenshot below, you can see an example of a Salesforce connection.
Note! More details on setting up Salesforce and NetSuite (SOAP) or NetSuite V2 (REST) connections can be found within Skyvia documentation.
Setting up Skyvia Import scenario for data integration
This simple scenario is created for data integrations between two data sources. For example, we can import customers and contacts from Salesforce to NetSuite and back.
- Click +NEW in the top menu and select Import scenario in the Integration category. In the opened window, you can find the detailed instructions on the right and the workspace with Source and Target data flows on the left.
- Select the data connections (those created in the step above).
- Define the Source type and connection, select the Target connection and apply additional options if needed.
4. Use the Add new button on the right to create a new data import task.
5. Specify Source settings. Select a source file, cloud app object, or database table/view to import data from, and, if necessary, configure data filtering. Alternatively, you can select the Execute Command or Execute Query action to query data (in advanced mode).
6. Specify Target settings. Select the target object (table) or multiple objects (tables) to import data to and the operation to apply when loading data.
7. Configure mapping of target columns to source columns, expressions, constants, lookups, etc.
Important! Firstly, when importing data from Salesforce to NetSuite, you must map the required fields: CompanyName and subsidiary_internalid. For this, you have to check this ID in NetSuite beforehand. Secondly, when importing data from NetSuite to Salesforce, you have to map the required Salesforce field AccountId, thus, you have to know the account id beforehand.
Note: Before saving your Import package, you can schedule it for automatic execution.
After completing all the Import package settings, click the Create button. Now you can run this package and get your data integrated.
Advantages of the Import integration scenario
The Import integration scenario works best for companies that don’t need to update data very often and when it’s possible to select the required amount of data for migration using filters. It also allows working with data from a historical perspective, in contrast to the triggers-action integration approach, when data starts to be imported only from the current moment the first trigger starts working. However, automatic data updating is impossible as it’s a simple downloading process. If you need to update the data, you can create another Skyvia Import package and set it to import only the records from the exact date.
Setting up Skyvia Synchronization scenario for data integration
This effective integration scenario synchronizes data with different structures while keeping all the data relations and providing powerful mapping settings for data configuring. Creating the Synchronization package is as simple as the Import one due to the powerful Skyvia wizard.
- Click +NEW in the top menu and select Synchronization scenario in the Integration category. In the opened window, you can find the detailed instructions on the right and the workspace with Source and Target data flows on the left.
- Select the data connections (those created previously).
- Define the Source type and connection, select the Target connection and apply additional options if needed.
4. Click the Add new button on the right to create a new data synchronization task. In this example, we do the following: in the Source list, select the Customer table; in the Target list, select the Account table and click Next step.
5. Next, you need to configure mapping settings. For both directions, in the Source to Target tab and the Target to Source tab and click Save.
Important! If the columns in source and target have the same names and types, they are mapped automatically.
After creating the Synchronization package, we should set up the schedule to automatically keep the data in sync. For this, click Schedule on the left side of the toolbar.
After completing all the Synchronization package settings, click the Create button. Now you can run this package and get your data integrated.
Advantages of the Synchronization integration scenario
The Synchronization integration scenario is well-suited for companies that need constant and regular data updates. It allows working not only with data from a historical perspective but also updating data in two platforms on a regular base. In this case, only updated data will be loaded with each subsequent download. Still, this method has its disadvantages. When synchronization is performed for the first time, it simply copies data from one side to another and vice versa and maps the original records to their copies in another source. So, it doesn’t check whether or not the record exists. Moreover, any new records created after synchronization will be out of it (records will exist only in their own sources and will never be synchronized).
In case these two integration scenarios aren’t enough. Skyvia has Data Flow and Control Flow packages for more advanced integrations.
Setting up Skyvia Data Flow scenario for data integration
This flexible scenario is created for complex data integrations. Being an easy-to-use no-coding tool, Data Flow helps to manage all data integration and transformation requirements in a single unified location.
Skyvia allows building and editing data flows on diagrams. Basically, in the beginning, a diagram is a blank canvas, which you fill in with components to visually arrange the entire data movement process. Users can drag components onto the diagram, connect them with links, make data transformations in between, and pass changed or split data to the final destination.
Note! When you open Data Flow for the first time, it will offer you the Fast Guide to the main features, which is very useful for newcomers.
Advantages of the Data Flow scenario
The Data Flow integration scenario works best for companies that need to integrate data from more than two sources and need constant and regular data updates with complex logic. It allows for integrating multiple data sources at once, doing multistage transformations, enriching data, etc.
Summary
NetSuite and Salesforce integration helps businesses understand the performance of every marketing, sales, finance, or support activity by collecting data from both systems and using it to provide actionable information and recommendations. It provides insights into how the whole processes work and how to improve customer service and eliminate bottlenecks.
This NetSuite Salesforce integration guide demonstrates two ways to integrate data between Salesforce and NetSuite: integration via API and seamless method by Skyvia with two integration scenarios for different business cases.
More articles about Salesforce integrations
Marketo Salesforce Integration: Step-by-Step Guide
Stripe to Salesforce Integration: Easy-to-Follow Guide
How to connect OneDrive to Salesforce Manually or with Connector
Salesforce Google Drive Integration: The Complete Guide
How to connect Hubspot and Salesforce easily
How to Connect Zendesk with Salesforce
Asana and Salesforce Integration: 2 easiest methods
Snowflake to Salesforce Integration: Best Code-Free Connectors
How to connect Shopify and Salesforce
Dropbox and Salesforce Integration
