BI360 for Salesforce.com. Enabling World-class Reporting for Salesforce Customers. A Solver White Paper. Document Version 4.0

Transcription

1 BI360 for Salesforce.com Enabling World-class Reporting for Salesforce Customers A Solver White Paper Document Version 4.0

2 Table of Contents Introduction... 2 Advantages of BI360 Reporting for Salesforce... 2 Salesforce Integration to BI Salesforce API and Connection Information... 4 Frequently Asked Questions about the Integration... 5 Options for Reporting, Budgeting and Dashboards... 6 BI360 for Salesforce - Report Examples... 7 Copyright Solver, Inc., 2017 BI360 White Paper Page 1

3 Introduction The purpose of this document is to describe the integration between Salesforce.com and BI360, as well as to provide examples BI360 report templates that show some of the output capabilities. Note 1: There was also an older BI360 (for BI360 4.x on-premise) integration tool with a Salesforce connector. This document describes the new BI360 integration tool that is a native part of the BI360 Web portal and available for BI360 cloud and BI (and later) on premise. Note 2: Although this document is focused on the Salesforce integration and related BI360 sales report examples, please note that this is just one capability of BI360. Please see for more information. Advantages of BI360 Reporting for Salesforce BI360 is a modern, self-service CPM Suite for Cloud and on-premise use that can extended beyond just the reporting covered in the white paper, to include forecasting/budgeting, consolidations, dashboards, and full data warehousing. With the BI360 report writer module, you will get the most extensive, modern Excel- and web-based report writer available for Salesforce customers. This gives you several benefits: Excel-based report writer provides features and formulas not available in the native Salesforce reporting tool or in the many 3 rd party dashboard solutions. If you have ever exported Salesforce data to Excel, imagine that you with BI360 now get all the power and familiar environment of Excel, but with completely automated, fully formatted reports. Run reports on demand from Excel, web or auto-distribute reports by . Automatically scheduled or on demand refresh of data from Salesforce to BI360 s data warehouse. Install BI360, use the easy integration wizard, download pre-built report templates and in less than 15 minutes start seeing your Salesforce data in ways you have never been able to before. Integration is out-of-the-box, plus you can add custom Salesforce fields should that be needed. Copyright Solver, Inc., 2017 BI360 White Paper Page 2

4 Pre-joined tables (e.g. Owner, Contact, Account, etc.) Pre-defined period logic (Salesforce date fields linked to weeks/months/etc. for easy reporting on e.g. trends, month-to-date, year-to-date, etc.) Get increased visibility and control of your Salesforce data and at the same time watch the sales team quickly become motivated to capture updated data in Salesforce due to vastly improved reporting output. Salesforce Integration to BI360 Like many other cloud-based systems, Salesforce offers web services connectors that outside systems can integrate with. Using the BI360 Integration tool (see images below), you can typically download Salesforce data and automatically configure the BI360 web portal in less than an hour and with no technical skills required. You will find the Salesforce connector in the Marketplace, accessed from within the Integrations menu in the BI360 Web Portal: Copyright Solver, Inc., 2017 BI360 White Paper Page 3

5 Salesforce API and Connection Information BI360 includes a robust connector to Salesforce data based on best practices recommendations from Salesforce. The BI360 data connector use Salesforce s REST API to connect to all of the objects configured by Salesforce. This allows for an organization with an active Salesforce account, to enable the REST API and quickly import their Salesforce data into the the BI360 Cloud or, for on-premise, BI360 version 5 and later. BI360 s Salesforce connector utilizes the following technologies provided by Salesforce. 1. TLS OAuth 2.0 Copyright Solver, Inc., 2017 BI360 White Paper Page 4

6 Frequently Asked Questions about the Integration Question Which modules in Salesforce are available in the integration? What about custom fields in Salesforce, how do you integrate them? How fast will it download data from Salesforce? What is the BI360 database platform? Can I also populate other types of data into the BI360 Data Warehouse? Can BI360 also be hosted like Salesforce? Is BI360 available on SaaS pricing? What can I do with my data once it has been loaded into the BI360 data warehouse? Answer Any data exposed in the Salesforce API is available to BI360. BI360 Integration Manager also provides access to custom fields in the integrated modules. This mostly depends on the connection you have to the Salesforce cloud and the amount of data you load each time. Microsoft SQL Server Yes, it is a true data warehouse and you can for example also populate it with ERP data (actual sales, general ledger data, payroll data, etc.) or other types of data you would like in the data warehouse. Yes, there are several hosting providers for BI360 or you can install it in-house. Yes, BI360 is available both on SaaS pricing or it can be purchased. At that point you can use any of the BI360 user tools, such as the modern report writer (see examples later in this document), dashboards or input forms (e.g. for budget or forecast input. You can read more about this in the section below. Copyright Solver, Inc., 2017 BI360 White Paper Page 5

7 Options for Reporting, Budgeting and Dashboards Once the BI360 data warehouse has been populated with Salesforce (and any other data source) data, any of the BI360 front-end modules can be used: 1) Reporting a. Formatted reports (see examples later in this document) b. Ad-hoc reports c. Report scheduling and distribution d. Web-based reporting 2) Budgeting a. Budget input (e.g. a revenue budget) b. Forecast input (e.g. a sales forecasts) c. Any other manual data entry form 3) Dashboard a. Sales dashboards b. Financial dashboards c. Other dashboards Please see for more detailed BI360 product information. Copyright Solver, Inc., 2017 BI360 White Paper Page 6

8 BI360 for Salesforce - Report Examples The following reports in this document are examples as well as out-of-thebox BI360 Excel- and web-based report templates you can download and use with the BI360 Web Portal as soon as you have populated it with your Salesforce data. Of course, you can also use the BI360 Excel-based Reporting module to design your own reports any way you would like them. Keep in mind that once reports have been designed (or you use the predefined reports) you have many deployment options: Build and run reports with BI360 s Excel-based reporting tool. Run reports with BI360 s web portal. Use the BI360 Report Publisher for automatic scheduling and distribution to your team. Recipients (e.g. your sales team) of reports do NOT need a BI360 license. Copyright Solver, Inc., 2017 BI360 White Paper Page 7

9 Comment: Top Opportunities above 20% probability and ranked by Weighted Revenue. The report also includes traffic lights, in cell charts and user-driven column sorting. Comment: Sales person focused report showing key metrics per sales person, such as: Estimated Revenue, Weighted Revenue, # of Opportunities and Average Estimated Revenue per Opportunity. Copyright Solver, Inc., 2017 BI360 White Paper Page 8

10 Comment: Deep focus on how many (special COUNT function handles this) opportunities each sales person has in each stage of the sales cycle. A detailed list of opportunities is available by expanding the row groups. Comment: Detailed Opportunities report that groups by sales person and ranks opportunities by Weighted Amount. In-cell charts and stars help highlight key information. Copyright Solver, Inc., 2017 BI360 White Paper Page 9

11 Comment: Detailed report that groups Opportunity Detail (line items) by Customer. Comment: Detailed report that groups Opportunity Stage in the sales process. Copyright Solver, Inc., 2017 BI360 White Paper Page 10