Why Going Salesforce Native Matters

Businesses need to start strong and operate efficiently as soon as possible. As we’re now firmly in the final quarter of the year, companies are beginning to review their 2022 performance—a year that was, to put it mildly, eventful— and are analyzing what’s worked and what hasn’t. As 2023 business planning commences, now’s the time to implement such ideas and match our company’s goals with fresh approaches. 

We created this article to share our knowledge of Salesforce integration for RFx response automation. This document references people primarily responsible for responding to RFPs, RFIs, DDQs, and security questionnaires, ranging from partial integrations with standalone proposal solutions to Avnio’s fully native offering.

What is the difference between an Integrated App and a Native App?

To begin with, why integrate with SFDC?

Your enterprise has put significant time and resources into making Salesforce your primary place of record for all customer-facing activities. PreSales activities, including RFx response, are increasingly crucial in core customer acquisition and retention business outcomes. Capturing the data related to these activities creates more opportunities for managers and team leaders to optimise their response process and be more proactive in handling new requests. 

One of the unseen benefits is greater alignment between RFx response teams and the rest of the sales organisation. Bringing the data together provides immediate business value for performance and metrics monitoring. Integrations form a bridge between sales and RFx teams that promote information sharing, better cross-team collaboration, and, ideally, a greater degree of shared responsibility in the response process. 

Native applications significantly impact data integrity, essential for work in every company’s department, from operations to accounting. Additionally, using native applications gives your entire organisation a consistent user experience, data model, and security model. Salesforce users can obtain a complete 360-degree view of potential prospects and customers thanks to this widely available single source of truth.

What is covered by a partial SFDC integration?

Pushing and pulling specific data between Salesforce and the independent response automation system is the primary function of the partial integration. The integration layout uses visual force pages to add standalone solution design components while adhering to Salesforce’s fundamental design principles and procedures, a standard integration strategy that independent solution suppliers offer.

Users of Salesforce can access project records and some of the project-related information (such as project status) in the standalone solution. Alternatively, the integration gives a primary user of the standalone response automation solution the option to merge data stored within a Salesforce object. New project records initiate from within your Salesforce org. Still, the user must migrate from Salesforce to the external solution to collaborate on a response project or manage and retrieve content.

What benefits do native solutions offer?

A native solution built on the Salesforce platform covers all the data and reporting captured by a partial integration plus any additional data points customised to your Salesforce org and relevant to response projects and historical content. 

The design of Avnio Response Cloud entirely mirrors the UX logic and activity workflows of Salesforce itself. With a native solution, it’s easy for all Salesforce users within your organisation to participate in RFx projects and content management from start to finish without the need to migrate out to another platform. Since teams usually have general Salesforce knowledge, the training requirements are often minimal, which can drive the internal adoption of new solutions. 

Creating or requesting a project is similar to partial integrations; however, switching applications to participate in the project lifecycle is no requirement. A fully native solution can support all operations related to producing, managing, and retrieving material.

Consider the level of flexibility and customisation you need because native applications developed within Salesforce give you immense flexibility to match your organisation’s needs. You will often need to add additional custom fields, workflow rules, or triggers in your native Salesforce project management app, which is a straightforward process through basic Salesforce configuration. 

We hope that no matter what path resonates best with the goals and vision of your sales organisation, you now have a better understanding of how going native within Salesforce will help level up your RFx operations for the rest of 2022 and beyond!