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Salesforce is a popular customer relationship management (CRM) platform that extends advanced data analytics capabilities to its users. However, to experience many of Salesforce's greatest data benefits, you must enlist the help of third-party data management and pipeline integrations.

In this guide, we'll walk you through the benefits of building pipelines for your Salesforce data and cover how Integrate.io can help you achieve your data integration goals.

First, here are five things you should know about Salesforce pipelines:

  • Salesforce pipelines streamline data flows to and from the platform to better unify customer-centric data.
  • Pipelines can help Salesforce users achieve a single source of truth, among other use cases.
  • Salesforce can also be integrated with enterprise-level analytics, cloud storage, and other platforms for improved data management capabilities.
  • There are multiple methods and tools available to set up Salesforce pipelines, such as ETL, ELT, and CDC. Among these, Heroku Connect offers a unique solution, distinct from ELT methods, to synchronize data between Salesforce and databases.
  • You don't have to be an experienced programmer to set up data pipelines; many solutions, such as Integrate.io, offer low-code/no-code features and drag-and-drop interfaces.

The Benefits of Building Salesforce Data Pipelines

A Salesforce data pipeline enables data to flow between Salesforce and destinations such as data warehouses (and vice versa). Some of the benefits of building these pipelines are as follows:

  • External data for internal data enrichment: Data from external sources, such as e-commerce platforms and ERP software, can inform and add to existing customer data in Salesforce.
  • Focused workspace enablement: With pipelines that feed all relevant data into Salesforce, your employees don't need to search for and constantly access other systems for the data they need.
  • Real-time data updates: The integrated nature of data pipelines ensures you don't need to complete constant data syncs or updates for accurate, real-time data insights.
  • Enhanced data analytics: For more well-rounded data and robust data analytics, many users opt to set up data pipelines between Salesforce and their preferred data analytics platform, data lake, or data warehouse.
  • Improved data quality: With real-time data updates and a more integrated environment, your team can ensure that Salesforce data aligns with other company data, making your data more reliable across the board.

Salesforce Data Integration Use Cases

Salesforce data integrations can be set up to address various business requirements and use cases. Examples of these use cases include:

  • Connecting with a data warehouse or data lake to enhance business intelligence and analytics within the Salesforce platform
  • Setting up a data exchange with legacy or homegrown systems that don’t have native Salesforce integration capabilities
  • Sending data into Salesforce from customer service and support, sales enablement, ERP, and order fulfillment tools and applications
  • Immediately sharing Salesforce data with external business intelligence dashboards and data analytics apps
  • Integrating digital marketing and advertising tools to better target messages to the right audiences and automatically track engagement

Why Use Integrate.io Over Other Data Integration Tools?

If your Salesforce team is looking for a better way to connect the Salesforce platform to the rest of your business applications, Integrate.io is the best data integration platform.

While Salesforce has some of its own pipeline-setup capabilities and other vendors offer Salesforce integrations and connectors, Integrate.io sets itself apart with low-code/no-code usability, a simple approach to ETL, and over 150 Salesforce-specific connectors that span a variety of business apps and use cases.

Combined with an affordable pricing model and a variety of support resources, Integrate.io provides the technology and partnership Salesforce teams need to integrate their Salesforce platform effectively.

4 Ways Integrate.io Connects With Salesforce

Another benefit of using Integrate.io is its many ways of connecting with Salesforce. Depending on your specific datasets and business use cases, any one of the following Salesforce integration methods could be the best fit for your organization:

  • ETL
  • ELT
  • Heroku Connect
  • Salesforce CDC

1. ETL

Integrate.io connects with Salesforce using a low-code/no-code approach to ETL (extract, transform, load). With the ETL connector for Salesforce, Integrate.io users can extract their data, transform that data in a separate tool or environment, and then load it into a database, data warehouse, or other repository.

Users may choose this integration option if they're interested in quickly transferring large amounts of CRM data to a data warehouse like Redshift or BigQuery or if they want to take advantage of advanced data engineering and AI features in a platform like Snowflake.

Users may also use ETL if they want to automate the process of sharing data with third-party business intelligence tools.

Pros

Some pros of the ETL method include:

  • Works with a selective amount of data
  • Offers more destinations than ELT
  • Transformations occur within the platform
  • Frequently works with drag-and-drop logic, making it accessible for less technical users
  • Most flexible option

Cons

Some cons of the ETL method include:

  • A lack of replication; databases are not replicated in a new location through this process
  • You must schedule exports for this to work continually

2. ELT

Integrate.io also offers a Salesforce connector for ELT (extract, load, transform), which makes it possible for users to extract their Salesforce data and then do much of the transformation work on a separate platform.

The ELT integration option is a great fit for organizations that want to complete business intelligence and data transformation tasks but with more frequent and consistent data replication and auto-schema mapping from Integrate.io.

Pros

Some pros of the ELT method include:

  • Little overhead
  • Limited effort is required to get data into a database
  • Replicating many objects is easier with this method
  • Typically a better fit for big data workloads than ETL

Cons

Some cons of the ELT method include:

  • ELT targets only a few widely used databases
  • Since the only targets are databases, using data for other systems requires users to write code in database languages like SQL

3. Heroku Connect

Heroku Connect sets up bi-directional synchronization between Salesforce and Heroku Postgres. When an object instance is inserted, updated, or deleted in Salesforce, it’s also inserted, updated, or deleted in the Postgres database. 

Similarly, if an insert, update, or deletion is made in the Postgres database, the corresponding operation is performed in Salesforce.

Pros

Some pros of the Heroku Connect method include:

  • A bi-directional ELT approach that's run by Salesforce
  • Point-and-click interface
  • Access to PostgreSQL data enrichment
  • Users can build apps with open-source stacks and sync them with Salesforce

Cons

Some cons of the Heroku Connect method include:

  • Can be expensive
  • The only target is PostgreSQL running on the Heroku platform

4. Salesforce CDC

Salesforce Change Data Capture (CDC) is a Salesforce-native feature that enables near-real-time synchronization of Salesforce data by writing changes to destinations like data warehouses or S3, rather than directly interfacing with other data sources through API calls.

Utilizing Salesforce CDC involves monitoring a stream of change events for specific Salesforce objects. Subsequently, appropriate mechanisms or scripts need to be implemented to capture these events and apply corresponding changes to the target database.

Pros

Some pros of the Salesforce CDC method include:

  • This method uses the most efficient APIs on Salesforce
  • Enables near-real-time delivery of changed data from Salesforce
  • A customer-first approach to data management and updates

Cons

Some cons of the Salesforce CDC method include:

  • Can be expensive
  • Only usable for code
  • The number of API calls is limited, which makes this method useful for a limited set of objects

Instead of manually setting up change data capture (CDC) processes, Integrate.io provides several CDC integrations that enable users to monitor Salesforce record changes and sync them to their designated destinations.

Integrate.io's CDC solutions are predominantly leveraged by Salesforce users who wish to maintain a continuous flow of change data from Salesforce to their target systems, ensuring they always have access to the most recent customer information for informed decision-making.

Harness the Power of Your Data With Integrate.io & Salesforce

With Integrate.io, you can optimize your Salesforce and business data through data pipeline and integration solutions. Integrate.io improves the accessibility of data, thus making it more intelligible and actionable across business use cases and applications.

If you're interested in optimizing your Salesforce data, we're here to help. Set up a demo to learn more about how Integrate.io can help you integrate your critical data.