Salesforce and Smartsheet systems integration for Smiley World

Overview

Smiley World (the owner of the Smiley brand) use a number of different systems to track the worldwide use of their brand and to manage the royalties generated. Two of those systems are the Salesforce CRM and an online project management and spreadsheet system called Smartsheet and these systems contain a large amount of common information. The staff of Smiley World are updating different parts of these systems on a daily basis and so needed a way to avoid both duplication of effort and errors caused by data being entered slightly differently in each system.

Process

We created a server application which works in the background, requiring no action on the part of the Smiley World staff.

In this case synchronisation takes place almost in real time and like the Bedford system it updates existing records and creates new ones by matching data from the two systems using predefined parameters. The synchronisation works in both directions, so records can be updated in either system.

Benefits

In the case of Smiley World the ideal solution was to integrate two separate systems namely Salesforce and Smartsheet. It enabled Smiley World to:

• Save time – data only needs to be entered once, either in SmartSheet or in Salesforce, and it is automatically copied over to the other application in near real-time
• Reduce errors due to mistyping – records can only be updated now if, for example, the company names are matching in both systems
• Improve reporting – greater consistency in data entry results in much more accurate quarterly reports being generated

Success story

After the system’s integration Smileys World noticed a, previously predicted, reduction of errors. This may have an impact on the prosperity of the company and its future plans. With one integrated system it is also easier to manage the royalties worldwide in real-time and without any delays due to lack of integrity. Following the integration of the systems, Smiley World was considering implementing a bigger software solution created by Headchannel Ltd.

Project facts

• Team – Developers 4 (Backend dev 2, Frontend dev 2), UX Designer 1, QA 1, BA 1, PM 1
• Project management – Waterfall
• Technology – .Net Framework