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In the world of SaaS (software as a service), a few prominent names come up again and again—and two of those are NetSuite and Salesforce. These two providers of cloud-based software have helped thousands of companies streamline their business processes, making them more efficient and cost-effective.

While NetSuite and Salesforce are both potent enough as standalone entities, they become even more powerful to companies when they’re used in combination. That’s why finding the right data integration tool to connect NetSuite and Salesforce is essential for your business.

In this article, we’ll discuss the functions of NetSuite and Salesforce, the benefits of integrating Salesforce with NetSuite, and how you can find the right integration tool to unite these two platforms.

What is NetSuite? The Business Value of NetSuite ERP

In the 1990s, Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle, convinced Evan Goldberg that web-based software was the future—and thus, NetSuite was born. Launched in 1998, NetSuite is often recognized as the first cloud computing software company.

Related Reading: What You Need to Know About NetSuite

Today, the NetSuite ERP (enterprise resource planning) platform is one of the world’s most popular software applications, used by more than 28,000 companies across the globe. ERP software helps companies manage their day-to-day business activities, with use cases ranging from accounting, billing, and human resources to inventory and supply chain management. The business value of NetSuite ERP includes benefits such as:

  • Better real-time business insights.
  • Lower management and operational costs.
  • Easier collaboration between employees and teams.
  • Greater scalability as your business grows and evolves.
  • Business process automation for higher accuracy and speed.

Along with its web-hosted ERP software, Netsuite has grown to include functionality such as CRM (customer relationship management), PSA (professional services automation), and e-commerce. 

What is Salesforce? The Business Value of Salesforce CRM

In 1999, the year after NetSuite was founded, Marc Benioff created Salesforce. Like NetSuite, Salesforce is one of the world’s oldest cloud-based software companies—and it has been going strong ever since its inception.

Related Reading: What is Salesforce?

Today, Salesforce is known as the leading provider of CRM (customer relationship management) solutions. The company even claims to be the world’s #1 CRM platform, with a 24 percent market share that far eclipses its closest competitors. The features that the Salesforce CRM can bring to your business include:

  • A single, centralized location for storing your customer data, providing a “customer 360” view.
  • Tracking customer interactions across every channel, from your website to social media.
  • Automating and optimizing the sales and marketing processes to help capture more leads and convert them into customers.
  • Simplifying collaboration among your sales team and throughout every business sector.
  • Providing for faster, more informed data-driven decision-making.

Overall, the greatest selling point of the Salesforce CRM is that it allows businesses to manage their customer relationships more efficiently and productively.

Related Reading: The Salesforce Database Explained

What are the Benefits of Salesforce NetSuite Integration? 

Individually, Salesforce CRM and Netsuite ERP are both powerful business tools. When combined, however, they offer even more advantages.

For example, while the NetSuite software does have its own CRM functionality, this offering is limited compared to the Salesforce CRM. The NetSuite CRM is better for small to medium-sized businesses, while the Salesforce CRM is powerful enough to support the needs of organizations of all shapes and sizes.

In addition, NetSuite and Salesforce may each depend on crucial information from the other platform: invoices, price quotes, bookings, and more. But keeping this data locked up only inside NetSuite, or only inside Salesforce, has serious drawbacks. This is what’s known as a “data silo”: a collection of valuable information that is not available to everyone in your organization who could potentially benefit from it.

Related Reading: The NetSuite Integration Guide

If you need the functionality of both NetSuite and Salesforce, therefore, the best solution is to integrate these two SaaS platforms. Companies can use this integration to get the most out of their sales, marketing, and customer service functions. The benefits of Netsuite and Salesforce integration include:

  • Automatic synchronization of data across the two platforms.
  • Breaking down existing data silos and preventing their creation.
  • Ensuring that data in both platforms is as accurate and up-to-date as possible.
  • Providing easy access to data to help sales reps efficiently generate leads and make informed decisions.
  • Removing the need for manual data entry, eliminating the chance of human error.

Using both Salesforce and Netsuite in your business operations has tremendous benefits—but because the two are independent software systems, you’ll need to find the right data integration solution.

Related Reading: 10 Core Tenets of Your Data Integration Strategy

How to Find the Best NetSuite-Salesforce Integration Tool

There are multiple ways of integrating NetSuite and Salesforce, each one better suited for different types of businesses. In this section, we’ll give an overview of your options.

1. Custom-built integration

If you have the budget, time, and in-house technical chops, you may wish to build your own integration between Salesforce and NetSuite. This involves exposing NetSuite and Salesforce data through an API (application programming interface) and then coordinating the data flows between these two endpoints. The downside of this approach is that it is highly complex (since NetSuite and Salesforce are themselves complex applications), and difficult to scale and maintain if the underlying applications change.

2. Purpose-built connector

Instead of building your own NetSuite-Salesforce integration, many businesses decide to purchase a connector from an integration provider. The advantage of this approach is obvious: you can stop worrying about the technical implementation and start enjoying the flow of data between the two platforms. However, while they may be efficient for a single purpose, NetSuite-Salesforce connectors don’t help you migrate data to other applications and systems in your IT environment (and you’ll likely need to do this as well).

3. Data integration tool

Last but not least, your third option for NetSuite and Salesforce integration is to use a dedicated data integration tool, such as an ETL (extract, transform, load) platform or an iPaaS (integration platform as a service). There are many such solutions on the market, each with its own features and specializations so that you can find the best fit for your needs. For example, different data integration tools have different pre-built connectors and come with different pricing models, such as the number of connectors used or the amount of data consumed.

How Integrate.io Can Help with Salesforce-NetSuite Integration

Thus far, we’ve discussed how NetSuite and Salesforce can each bring value to your business—but also that they’re much more powerful in combination. There’s just one question left: what is the best data integration tool for NetSuite and Salesforce? The answer is simple: Integrate.io.

Integrate.io is an ETL and data integration platform that makes it easy to unite all your enterprise data across your IT environment, including Salesforce and NetSuite. The Integrate.io platform includes a user-friendly, drag-and-drop visual interface with low-code and no-code functionality, letting even non-technical users build robust data pipelines between their data sources, software, and databases. What’s more, Integrate.io comes with more than 140 pre-built connectors and integrations, including NetSuite and Salesforce—bringing these platforms together with just a few clicks. 

By using Integrate.io, you can handle your Salesforce and Netsuite integration fast, letting you spend less time worrying about the technical details and more time focusing on the benefits that this integration brings to your business. 

Want to learn more about how Integrate.io can help with integrating Netsuite and Salesforce? Contact our team of data experts today for a chat about your business needs and objectives, and to schedule a 7-day pilot of the Integrate.io platform. We’re excited to see how we can help you reach your goals by seamlessly integrating Salesforce with Netsuite.