JDE Integration: Salesforce.com and JD Edwards Integration Made Simple

JDE Integration: Salesforce.com and JD Edwards Integration Made Simple

If your company is using JD Edwards and Salesforce.com then this blog entry is for you. I recently witnessed a demonstration of a low-risk, low-cost out-of-the-box integration solution between Salesforce.com and JD Edwards World.

Seeing Is Believing. Ami Gal and Michael Singer of Magic Software Enterprises are two of the software gurus that have created this solution which can be implemented by your local JD Edwards consultant. The addition of the salesforce.com adapter to JDE Connect is big news for affected customers.

Most companies running these two programs together are either forced to live without integrated data or to engage in expensive and high-risk line-by-line programming projects. The costs of living without integration are enormous.

The Problems with Manual Processes and Manual Programming.Manual processes cause reentry of data at enormous expense to an organization with guaranteed errors and costly error corrections, delays in information and transaction processing, missing or lost customer data and worst of all – lost orders that make customers and employees scream.

Manual programming can overcome the integration challenge but it is extremely costly and most programming teams underestimate the complexity of the integration project. A high number of programming projects fail after several months of delay. Even those that complete on time are prone to serious deficiencies such as lack of error handling and exceptions management, inability to scale as your business grows and non-existent monitoring capabilities or archiving of business process flow information.

JD Edwards Integration with Salesfoce.com Done Right. But as I said, there is a solution that I have seen working with my own eyes. Salesforce.com activity can automatically trigger business process flows that check for the existence of a customer in the JD Edwards system and then add them to the address book within JDE if they are new, for example.

Just as important the quote to order conversion process is now fully transparent and automated with no time delays, no hassle and high reliability. Since the triggers are real time, a salesperson using salesforce.com can book the order and that will trigger a behind the scenes process that automatically initiates a JD Edwards Z-file load (after appropriate validity checking, of course) into the JD Edwards Sales Order data. And vice versa, salesforce.com data in an outside salesperson's domain, for example, can be updated when their inside salesperson enters an order directly using JD Edwards World sales order module. Now isn't everything more pleasant when we all just get along?

In the past, an integration solution like this could easily cost one to two million dollars because the integration software licenses cost six figures and the integrators, even when using an EAI system like TIBCO or WebMethods, were forced to do extensive Java style development of the connection itself.

Simplified ApproachNow with JDE Connect, you can solve the problem using business or IT analysts rather than programmers. JDE Connect allows you to visually design business processes and flows using drag and drop functionality. And here's the kicker: they have added a salesforce.com component that you can drag into the business flow as you are designing. And since all the JD Edwards data mapping is available as well, it is simply a matter of deciding what processes are most important for your business.

You don't have to do the work yourselves. Your JDE Connect business partner, backed by folks like Michael Singer and Ami Gal at Magic Software Enterprises can help tremendously.