Thanks for sharing @Olivia MacDonald! Good call on using a service account type email to setup the connection so that permissions remain constant.
Clement and I are both at not for profits so pulling commissions or customer doesn't quite apply, but we could pull some of our donor information or specific donation amounts/history. With that, I think we could model in Vena how those donations match up against our projected expenses, which could then inform how we make any operational adjustments or target our fundraising efforts.
And yes bad data is definitely a concern for us too. Our Finance team often feels the need to double check the estimates that our Development team (fundraising) share. If we can build good practices and controls into our new CRM and setup an automated flow with logic that both teams agree to, then they should hopefully be able to trust the data on a regular basis.
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Brendan Eger
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Original Message:
Sent: 03-30-2022 09:35
From: Olivia MacDonald
Subject: Salesforce Connector Usage
Hey Brandon and Brendan! I work on the finance team in Vena so thought I could share my experience as a finance user. We have used our salesforce integration to calculate commissions on a monthly basis for years and have loved it. My biggest piece of advice is to use a functional email address rather than someone's personal work email to create the connection as you can have some rework if they change teams and their access changes.
Our latest advancement is to bring in customer status and notes from salesforce so we can use them for our weekly collections forecasting. We bring in our invoices from our ERP and then the status field and any notes about the customer to Vena so we can view everything in one place and base our expectations on a complete data source. I have limited salesforce experience so it took me a little time to figure out the scope of data I wanted and how to write the SOQL but it was smooth sailing after that.
My biggest concern with the integration was what if the data I'm integrating is bad (misentered by someone and not verified). We have a few different checks in place to make sure the data has been reviewed by the sales team and the finance team to overcome this, but you can also lock the ARR field after it has been reviewed so it can't be retrospectively updated by anyone outside of finance and this was an important addition for our peace of mind.
Hope this helps!
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Olivia MacDonald
Original Message:
Sent: 03-29-2022 18:48
From: Brandon Combs
Subject: Salesforce Connector Usage
No real headway here. Our IS department was not yet ready to set up proper user permissions for us to access the Salesforce data directly. I never heard back from folks on their experiences. We are also under a massive ERP replacement project, so we decided to hold on connecting to Salesforce until we see what the new ERP setup will bring.
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Brandon Combs CPA|CGMA
Director of Finance - Camping
Young Life
Colorado Springs, CO
828.773.5371
Original Message:
Sent: 03-29-2022 17:49
From: Brendan Eger
Subject: Salesforce Connector Usage
@Brandon Combs I'd love to hear how this is going for you as we're considering implementing Salesforce. While I'm not yet sure what data we might integrate, I'd be interested to hear what type of data you're thinking of pulling in and then how you'd use that within Vena.
Also, thanks for asking that data security question! Always important to keep that top of mind during any integration.
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Brendan Eger
Original Message:
Sent: 02-03-2022 09:55
From: Brandon Combs
Subject: Salesforce Connector Usage
We are looking at connecting Saleforce to Vena in order to bring in some data. What experience might any of you have with the SF connector? Is it easy to limit the scope of what information is brought in? Have you found it valuable? I see a world of possibilities if we could access all our SF data and present it alongside our financials and existing Vena reporting.
Any thoughts around this are appreciated!
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Brandon Combs CPA|CGMA
Director of Finance - Camping
Young Life
Colorado Springs, CO
828.773.5371
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