MIS
Project Proposal Assignment
Fall 2017
Project Proposal
Project Name: Integration between SAP and Salesforce
Project Details
Project Name
Integration between SAP and Salesforce
Sponsor
Start Date
Allan Baker
01/02/18
Completion Date
03/01/19
Background to the proposed work
The overall purpose of the project is to improve efficiencies by streamlining the process and
communication between SAP (ERP) and Salesforce (CRM) system to provided current and complete data to
that is visible across business units. Along with synchronized flow of maintenance and creation of customer
data. What has led to this current position is the initial set up of both he ERP and CRM systems were
specifically tailored only to one business operation. Causing other business operations to use both the ERP
and CRM separately to perform specific business functions causing repeat and repetitive work across all
external and internal channels. This project needs to be done to merger the functions of business processes
and take advantage of efficiencies allowed for by streamlining and synchronization of the information flow
process. The current situation that is accruing is the use of multiple systems with multiple sources of data
that are not communicating causing misinformation and lack of access to the proper information to allow
for Business Units to make informed business decision regarding customers and everyday operations. The
urgency to do this project now is to build in some efficiencies with the price margins for our community
product are under pressure from outside international influences so everything that increase performance
and decrease overhead is a top priority. The result of the project should provide Accelerated real time
decision making throughout the Business units, increased efficiencies in business operations and improve
overall Customer Service. If the project was not implicated it could lead to a loss market share as pricing
could become none competitive, customer service could suffer since information will continue to lack, and
revenues could decrease with the loss of customers as a result.
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Project Proposal
Project Name: Integration between SAP and Salesforce
Objectives
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Increase the visibility across Business units.
Reduce administration burden on redundant tasks.
The ability to centralize and synchronize customer’s data for all Business units allow Corporates shared
services be the go to for all current and up to date information.
Reducing the number of reports used to show the same information in the silos of business units.
Speed up processing time and decision timing for payment term, retention tracking, & lien claims, by
synchronizing master data between SAP and Salesforce
Scope
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The project will focus on the information and data shared between the fabrication and
installation units and Corporates shared services.
Seamlessly transfer data from SAP to Salesforce allowing Salesforce to inform the
fabrication business units the current status of the customers and their current project
status.
This project will not be involving the estimating and manufacturing of products, any other
no fabrication process.
This project will not be used to streamline any marketing or market research.
This project will process the Contract management, Type of billing, Accounts receivable,
warranty terms, & Customer history.
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Project Proposal
Project Name: Integration between SAP and Salesforce
Deliverables
List of the major products/deliverables that are necessary to achieve the objectives of the project.
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The ability for business units to see data in Salesforce through Bi-Directional account creation and
maintenance between both Salesforce and SAP. i.e. customer information like credit rating, pay
history, open contracts, closed contracts, open A/R, Contract terms included specific payment
terms and type of contract security in lien able or bonded jobs, will be shared and created in either
system and synched together.
Reducing the various steps and use of external systems to complete a specific task related to a
customer’s file.
Being able to implement central information in a customer or projects record, where every time a
contact or account is viewed in salesforce all related order history as well as current financial status
will be visible real time in Salesforce.
Allow for shorter administration time and annotating process steps.
IT Value Pathway
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IT Value pathway of Technology renewal; SAP and Salesforce will be able to communicate through
either a connector or through a fully programed integration ad hoc implementation. This would
allow for the synching of data from one system to the other.
IT Value pathaway of Business Process Improvement. The processes associated with data between
the two systems would be able to be in one central place where across all business units will have
access to see the status of customer’s performance.
Business benefits
The business benefit of this this integration you can expected to see a Business process improvement in
data integrity and increase efficiencies, and the ability for Business units to make faster decisions. The new
or renew technology will allow for a synchronized application where data entered into one system will be
created in another. This will provide more flexibility and data processing, the ability to support more
complex database functions, it will solve the problem of dual data entry, which will reduce data quality
issues and inefficiencies.
Assumptions
We will be making the assumptions that we have the financial manpower resources avaible to deliver
this project.
Constraints
This project should be done in phased implementation due to the different operations per regions. The
East and central region can be rolled out in the beginning do to the similarities in operations. Followed by
the West region where that division should add to the process of installation of the steel products into the
contract terms and retainage billings. Also the communication between the two systems will have to have
external applications to assist in the integration of data.
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Project Proposal
Project Name: Integration between SAP and Salesforce
Constraints
Business-IT Alignment
Risks
Risks of implementation is the two systems is where the products are located, Salesforce is a SaaS
application and SAP is an on premise application, meaning you are doing a cloud integration project with to
different location sites. Another risk if is if the right transformation and mapping tool, if the data in one
system is not being properly reformatted it will not make sense to the other system.
Major dependencies
Both systems will be dependent on connectivity, data structure, common transitions shared between SAP
& Salesforce, & a transformation and mapping tool for data integration solutions.
Stakeholders
Shared Services;
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Project Proposal
Project Name: Integration between SAP and Salesforce
Stakeholders
VP, Continuous improvement & Transformation – will be the key stakeholder will approve and make
decision of the process.
Director of Shard Services – will be making decisions on will provide resources to implement the project.
Master Data – will be affected and will need to be keep informed.
Director of Order to Cash – must be kept informed because the outcome of the project will affect their
team directly.
Business Units;
Regional VP – Must be keep informed of the process for impact to Business units they will communicate
what the business units need for information.
IT;
Manager of ERP Development – will need to make the changes and implement the system integration.
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Part B: Project Implementation
1. Please explain how you would determine if this IT investment was successful. Be sure to provide
justification or rationale for your answer.
For this project, I would deem it to be successful if we show improvement in the areas of process
improvement. Allowing credit and sales managers the real-time customer assessment before they
entered into or approved a contract with a customer. The process that I would mainly look at as
metrics is in the area of processing time in making a business decisions. So, if the integration
allows for any person in any business unit to look at particular customer and see if they are credit
worthy and/or see and analysis there pay habits and be able to assess the risk of bidding or
entering into a particular project with that customer within a timely manner it would be a success.
2. Please explain how emerging issues in IT play a role (or could play a role) in the real-world
managerial context of your selected organization. What are these issues (either managerial or
technical issues) and how are these critical in understanding how to successfully implement this IT
investment?
Alignment of IT with the Business – IT up until recently has been unaligned and looked as an
overhead expense with little value added to our core business of manufacturing. What has change
within my organization is that now management sees that with the right IT plan business
efficiencies can be achieved to reduce overhead expenses overall.
Agility Flexibility in IT – The lack of understanding throughout the vertical management structure
slows down the acceptance of any new and innovative idea slow any new process involving IT is
slow to be implemented do to the chain of approvals.
Security/Privacy – Security is an important issue that our organization does implement very
competent controls to protect the organizations information and has in my opinion been a head of
the curve in protecting the digital assets.
3. Please explain how your IT investment supports the organization in making business decisions.
How does this IT investment support the strategic role that information technology (IT) plays in the
organization to make business decisions?
The IT investment will support the organization by allowing use to make faster decisions in
everyday operations with customers. Either to extend credit or to recognize a problem with
customers and address it before it gets beyond repair. This investment will allow for us to be a
leader in industry customer service and increase or product/services. It will allow for us increase or
efficiencies and quality in data for each customer and project.
4. What form would your role or involvement take in working with this organization to implement
this IT investment? Could you play a different role with this organization? What do they want or
need, and might that require you to take on a new role or adjust the scope of your engagement
with the organization?
In this process, I would be involved in the project as a team member working with our order to cash
director to help them with making decisions and helping with the quality checks made by the
stakeholders. I could and would want to be in the role of team leader making the decisions and
doing the overall quality check of the project. I do think they would need me to take on more of a
continuous improvement team member or teal leader. So it would adjust my engagement with the
organization.
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