Background
Two companies in related industries have merged to form a new, larger entity. Each company has been using its own Salesforce instance to manage customer relationships, sales, and operations. As part of the merger, it's crucial to consolidate the Salesforce data from both companies into a single instance to streamline processes, improve collaboration, and provide a unified view of customers.
Challenges
Data Mapping and Consolidation: The Salesforce instances of both companies likely have different data structures, custom fields, and record types. Mapping and consolidating this data accurately is a complex task.
Data Duplication: There's a possibility of duplicate records between the two Salesforce instances. These duplicates need to be identified and resolved during the merge.
Data Quality: Ensuring that the data is clean, accurate, and consistent after the merge is essential to avoid issues in the unified Salesforce instance.
Data Volume: Both companies might have substantial amounts of data. Merging this data in a way that maintains system performance is a challenge.
Custom Processes: Each company might have custom processes, workflows, and integrations that need to be considered during the merge.
Solution
The merged company decides to use Jitterbit as the integration platform to merge their Salesforce instances. Here's how they proceed:
Preparation and Planning: The company forms a cross-functional team to plan the merge. They analyze the data structures, custom fields, and record types in both Salesforce instances.
Data Mapping and Transformation: Using Jitterbit, they create a comprehensive data mapping plan to map fields, objects, and relationships between the two instances. They set up transformations to handle any differences in data formats or values.
Duplicate Identification: They use Jitterbit's data quality tools to identify and merge duplicate records. This might involve consolidating contacts, accounts, and other related data.
Data Cleansing: Before merging, they clean and standardize data as needed to ensure consistency. This includes validating email addresses, addresses, and other critical information.
Testing Environment: They set up a testing environment where they can simulate the merge process with a subset of data. This helps them refine their approach and identify any issues.
Data Migration: After successful testing, they proceed with the actual data migration using Jitterbit. They closely monitor the process and review logs for any errors.
Custom Processes and Workflows: They ensure that any custom processes, workflows, and integrations are taken into account during the merge. They might need to modify or recreate these in the unified Salesforce instance.
Post-Merge Validation: After the merge, they perform extensive validation to ensure that the data has been accurately merged, relationships are intact, and custom processes are functioning as expected.
Benefits
Unified View: The merged company now has a unified Salesforce instance that provides a comprehensive view of customers and operations.
Improved Collaboration: Teams from both merged companies can now work together more effectively with shared data.
Data Integrity: Jitterbit's mapping, transformation, and data quality tools ensure that data integrity is maintained throughout the merge.
Efficiency: Automation provided by Jitterbit streamlines the merging process, reducing manual efforts.
Reduced Complexity: Jitterbit's user-friendly interface simplifies the complex process of merging Salesforce instances.
Scalability: The process can be repeated for future mergers or acquisitions, allowing the company to adapt as needed.
In conclusion, using Jitterbit to merge Salesforce instances for a merged company offers a robust solution to consolidate data and streamline operations. Planning, testing, and collaboration among various teams are key to a successful merge.